GERMANY
A fortified settlement on a hill above the Danube (see Fortifications). It was a very important early Iron Age center in the seventh, sixth, and fifth centuries BC, on the site of an earlier Bronze Age settlement that flourished in the fifteenth to twelfth centuries BC, though it was abandoned in between. This was the key center of power and trade in south Germany in the Iron Age.
A remarkable feature of the settlement was the citadel’s circuit wall, built in 600 BC. It was a mudbrick wall 13 feet (4m) high, probably with a roofed walkway on top. Rectangular towers projected from it at intervals. It was destroyed by fire in 530 BC.
Associated with the Heuneberg is the Hohmichele Barrow, an important grave mound built in the sixth century BC. Inside were two wooden chambers. One contained the body of a woman with a wagon. The other contained the body of a man with a wagon and harness, laid on a bull’s hide with a woman beside him. The man had with him the grave goods of a warrior-prince: two bows, a quiver, and 50 iron-tipped arrows. What was most surprising about this grave was its opulence. There were bronze vessels and jewelry and rich textiles in the shape of clothing and wall-drapes, which incorporated Chinese silk. It was an exceptionally rich tomb and it challenges classically influenced ideas of a barbaric Iron Age Europe.
The finds at the Heuneberg show that the people here carried on a prosperous trade with the Greeks of Massilia (Marseille).
Another Celtic tomb dating from about 600 BC has been found not far from the Heuneberg. It is unusually well preserved and contains elaborate jewelry of amber and gold. The tomb consists of an underground chamber 16 feet (5m) by 13 feet (4m). Its oak floor is intact and well preserved. The finds suggest that a woman was buried there. The entire burial chamber was lifted by cranes onto a flatbed truck and taken to a lab at Ludwigsburg. Other tombs at Heuneberg have been found, but usually they have been looted; this one was not.
World History
