The earthworks at Altheim

Abstract

In 2012, fi eldwork recommenced at the Altheim earthwork, discovered more than a century ago. The investigation in its immediate environs revealed a second ditched enclosure from the Altheim period, south-east of the previously known structure. The two enclosures are spatially related to one another. It was found that several decimetres of soil have been eroded during the last hundred years in the area of the north earthwork; the very substance of both monuments is acutely threatened. The fi rst radiocarbon datings, carried out on samples of domestic animal bone, allow both enclosures to be dated to the 37th/36th century BC and suggest a temporal sequence of the ditches. 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 confi rmed by the new excavation. The southwest-northeast orientation of the structures’ long axes permits an archaeoastronomical interpretation: knowledge obtained from the observation of natural phenomena was transferred to architecture. The new investigation sheds further doubt on the interpretation of the enclosures as fortifi cations.