The graves of the Fallward cemetry in the mirror of their organic objects - research on the funerary customs of the late Roman and Migration Period in northwestern Germany

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Hauke Jöns; Professor Dr. Christoph Krekel
• Subject Area: Prehistory and World Archaeology
• Term: since 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 432733919

North of the Wurt Fallward, district of Cuxhaven, 200 cremation and 60 inhumation graves from the 4th and 5th centuries were excavated in the 1990s. They belong to a burial place that was laid out in the area of a beach ridge of the Lower Weser River. Some grave pits were dug deep down into the fossil marsh clay. Here, the anaerobic environment offered optimal conditions for the preservation of organic materials. In addition to the bones, wooden grave structures as well as complete inventories of grave goods made of wood and textiles but also remains of plants laid into the graves were more or less completely preserved. The detailed evaluation and publication of this important graveyard has therefore long been regarded as a desideratum of research. This is now implemented in the project, which has been funded by the DFG since 2020. The research done so far on the grave inventories, which are unparalleled in northern Central Europe, opened up a unique perspective for the reconstruction of burial traditions in a late antique settlement region of the Barbaricum. In addition, it may be evaluated whether the supra-regional contacts postulated for various contemporary sites in the Elbe-Weser triangle, are also reflected in the local burial rites of the Wurt Fallward. During the first phase of the project, the investigations focused on the six best-preserved burials. Of these, there are unprocessed organic artefacts and find layers, some of which have been secured by block-lifting. An interdisciplinary bundle of methods used in archaeology, textile archaeology, dendrochronology, anthropology, paleogenetics and paleobotany is the backbone of the investigation. Their combined application has already enabled numerous new insights into the socio-economic and socio-cultural status as well as to the supra-regional contacts of the local funeral community. In the now applied second project phase – also designed to run for 36 months –, the successful interdisciplinary research will be continued and intensified. Initially, the research on the above-mentioned graves shall be completed. But also the poorly preserved or less extensively equipped burials as well as the cremation graves that have not yet been processed, will be in the focus of the archaeological, textile-archaeological and archaeobotanical investigations. The investigations will again include anthropological and aDNA analyses of the skeletons, but shall additionally comprise also archaeozoological observations of the animal bones. With archaeometric analyses, in particular a comprehensive investigation of the colours visible on wooden accessories, which are unique for the regions north of the Alps, the previous studies will experience a significant expansion. Altogether, it is to be expected that the research will contribute considerably to the understanding of the settlement history and social history of north-western Germany in the time of the Roman Empire and the Migration Period.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants