Project Details
Projekt
Helvetian Land Abandonment and Birch-Pollen Peaks: Archaeological-Botanical Research on Settlement and Land Use in Southwest Germany between the Late Latène Period and the Roman Imperial Period
Subject Area
Prehistory and World Archaeology
Term
since 2023
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 527250117
The project aims at a sharper and more targeted identification of the transition from Late La Tène to the beginning of the Roman Period and the associated settlement dynamics. Through interdisciplinary research considering palynological evidence the Late La Tène chronology based on pottery finds will be correlated with the settlement history. This in its turn will provide new insights into the continuity between Late La Tène and the Roman Period. Therefore, the aim of the project will be to correlate the radiocarbon-dated settlement hiati visible in the pollen diagrams with archaeological finds and context. From southwestern Germany, there exist 32 well-studied high-resolution pollen profiles. For most of them, the analysis is completed, but only a few require additional analysis. The correlation is challenging, because the pollen diagrams, after the peaks in birch pollen (“Birkengipfel”) indicating less intensive settlement phases, are not followed by closed beech forest, but by renewed land use, lasting until Late Antiquity. But since Roman settlement started more than 100 years after the end of the Late La Tène oppida, the question arises, who has inhabited the land in the meantime? The hypothesis, that new inhabitants were coming from eastern-central Germany, as this is proven for North Baden, Main-Franconia and southeastern Bavaria, should be investigated also for southwest Germany. The archaeological aim of the project is, therefore, to identify traces of immigrants in the found material (pottery), in order to be able to integrate pollen evidence, archaeological models and historical tradition. The "birch peaks" are to be specified by direct radiometric dating, so that chronologically parallel peaks can be identified and therefore supra-regional trends can be recognized. Particular interest will be focused on the Late Iron Age, because, according to the current level of knowledge, the birch peaks are very common in this period. If the hypothesis is confirmed, that at the turn of the century, large parts of south-west Germany fell out of agricultural use for one to three generations, this would have consequences for archaeological and historical research. This concerns not only the existence of a supra-regional settlement interruption but also the shortening of its duration caused by new human impact and is of importance for understanding the settlement dynamics in the interrelation between Celtic, Roman and Germanic populations.
DFG Programme
Research Grants
International Connection
Austria
Co-Investigators
Professor Dr. Salvatore Ortisi; Professorin Dr. Sabine Rieckhoff; Professor Dr. Manfred Rösch
Cooperation Partner
Professorin Dr. Maria Ivanova-Bieg
