Die jungneolithischen Erdwerke von Altheim

In 2012, fieldwork recommenced at the Altheim earthwork, discovered more than a century ago. The investigations in its immediate environs revealed a second ditched earthwork of the Altheim period, south-east of the previously known enclosure. The two monuments are spatially related to one another. It was found that several tens of centimetres of soil have been eroded during the last hundred years in the area of the northern earthwork; the very substance of both monuments is acutely threatened. The first radiocarbon measurements, carried out on samples of domestic animal bone, allow us to date both enclosures to the 37th/36th century BC and suggest that the ditches followed a chronological sequence. Certain earlier observations, namely the high proportion of arrowheads among the flaked stone tools and the very low proportion of bones from wild animals, were confirmed by the new excavations. The northwest-southeast orientation of the structures' long axes permits an archaeo-astronomical interpretation: knowledge obtained from the observation of natural phenomena was transferred to architecture. The new investigations sheds further doubt on the interpretation of the enclosures as fortifications