Bøger af Wolfram Schier

This volume is the first final publication of the research projects on Neolithic circular enclosures at FU Berlin. The excavation of the site, discovered in 1989, took place from 1998-2004 as a teaching excavation of the Universities of Bamberg and, since 2000, Würzburg. The book chapters deal with 1) the history and state of research, 2) the site, excavations and surveys, 3) the features, 4) the dating, stratigraphy and distribution of finds, 5) the small finds, 6) flint artefacts, 7) animal bones, 8) the 47th c. B.C. vertical burial and 9) a synthesis in German and English. The location was carefully chosen and staged visual references to extremes of the solar year. Thanks to stratified radiocarbon data, the at least 4-phased, discontinuous use of the site from ca. 4850-4700 B.C. as a generational project and permanent building site was proven, and pottery from the Middle and Late Großgartach and Planig-Friedberg stages was analysed in detail. Daub with impressions of wattle and split timber and smoothed, partly whitewashed outer surfaces originated from the enclosures or buildings. Querns, animal bones and pottery occurred in a highly fragmented and selected state in separate concentrations.

Circular enclosures [Kreisgrabenanlagen] or rondels have raised the interest of archeologists for more than a century. During the past two decades they received intensified attention in the media and wider public as "solar observatories" or "calendrical monuments". After conferences at Goseck [2004] and Heldenberg [2005], the time was ripe for another workshop combining recent research with fresh ideas. This took place online in 2022 as part of the research project Constructed Knowledge of Free University Berlin. The present volume contains 21 out of 30 papers presented there. Topics include new hypotheses and research on rondels in general, an overview of the FUB research project, site studies based on excavation, survey, in situ pXRF, experimental reconstruction, and Bayesian modelling at places such as Velm, Hornsburg I, Eggendorf am Walde, Niederleis, Rechnitz, Schletz, Heldenberg [A], Hradec Králové [CZ], Goseck, Kyhna, Quedlinburg I, Ippesheim, Hopferstadt, and in North Rhine-Westphalia [D]. Additionally, there are studies on visual characteristics and orientation patterns of rondels, their aptitude as venues of processions, and on burial customs of the Western Lengyel Culture.