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Their findings provide insight into the lives of ordinary people in the countryside during the Celtic-Roman period and the transformation of their culture after the Roman conquest.
The town of Wadern is using this information to promote the area as a tourist destination. However, the findings' significance reaches far beyond tourism.
The following text has been machine translated from the German and has undergone no postediting.
The two monumental mounds, each topped with a striking stone pine cone, are visible testimonies to the past. Following earlier excavations, the burial mounds were reconstructed in Oberlöstern 25 years ago and partly rebuilt with original stones. However, the burial mounds do not stand alone. They are part of an ancient settlement landscape – and as such, they are astonishingly eloquent witnesses to their time.
Since 2006, archaeologist Sabine Hornung has been gathering insights through field research in the Hochwald forest, which are gradually bringing to light the development of the people and environment of this region. In the process, she has made discoveries of global historical significance, such as near Hermeskeil: in 2010, she was able to identify a Roman military camp there and, through many years of research, uncover new information about Caesar's Gallic War and its consequences for the local population. With the findings from Oberlöstern and its wider surroundings, the professor of prehistory and early history at Saarland University is adding another piece to the puzzle: the rural settlement from the Celtic and Roman periods to the early and high Middle Ages, which will be the focus of future research. ‘Our findings provide insights into the lives of ordinary people in the countryside, beyond what we know from history books,’ says Sabine Hornung, who involves students and doctoral candidates in her research at an early stage.
Virtually nothing remains above ground of the former settlements around Oberlöstern. ‘Two thousand years of agriculture have taken their toll,’ says the archaeologist. However, with her research team, she was able to reconstruct the floor plan of a Roman villa that was surprisingly magnificent for the area and whose existence was already known. They also discovered a Celtic predecessor settlement: a hamlet with about five to six groups of buildings. In addition, they researched mills and stone quarries there. ‘The ensemble of grave finds and various archaeological monuments is unique in the entire West Hunsrück region,’ explains the expert in landscape archaeology.
Her research in Oberlöstern focuses on the cultural development of rural areas in the Roman Empire. The two burial mounds from the second half of the second century AD also reveal a great deal about the people of that time and their self-image – even though the graves were destroyed long ago by looters and agriculture. At the time when the mounds were built, the formerly Celtic region was firmly under Roman political control and the people were strongly influenced by Roman culture. They identified as Roman – even the way they buried their dead was Roman. ‘Roman and Celtic burials follow completely different concepts of the afterlife,’ explains Sabine Hornung.
The burial mounds stood in the middle of an existing Roman burial ground with otherwise typical Roman flat urn graves and a Roman pillar tomb. ‘The monumental burial mounds are a cultural hybrid. As earth mounds, they are visible from afar and display typical Celtic burial architecture. However, they are enclosed by massive ashlar walls in accordance with Roman custom. The stone pine cones that crown them are also typical Roman symbols of eternal life,’ says Sabine Hornung. ‘With these mounds, their builders emphasise their Celtic roots, but at the same time draw on representative Roman architectural elements. The allusion to their Celtic ancestry probably also manifests an inherited claim to ownership of the land. In terms of the history of mentalities, a lot can be gleaned from this,’ says the archaeologist. By placing the finds in their context, she can draw conclusions about how people lived, what they identified with and to whom they felt they belonged. This makes it possible to gain an insight into everyday life in the past.
The graves belonged to a settlement located about half a kilometre to the north-east. ‘It is a rural settlement landscape including the burial ground, a temple district on a hill that was the cultic-religious centre of the community, a farmstead belonging to the large landowners and other farms belonging to dependent smallholders,’ says Hornung. With her research, she is reconstructing the development of this settlement landscape across the ages. ‘Originally, there was an Iron Age – i.e. Celtic – predecessor settlement here. In the first century BC, people lived not far from the Rotbach stream down in the valley in wooden post buildings,’ says the archaeologist. Characteristic dark discolorations in the soil allowed her and her team to identify where the wooden posts had once been stuck in the ground. ‘In the late Iron Age, the hamlet probably comprised five to six houses, including farm buildings. Several families lived here. Social differences are not apparent in the architecture,’ she explains.
This remained the case until the end of the first century AD. ‘Then a landowning upper class began to emphasise their elevated status architecturally,’ says the archaeologist. Using geomagnetic ground measurements, known as geophysical prospecting, which detect anomalies in the Earth's magnetic field and thus locate archaeological structures, she and her team were able to reconstruct the Roman villa: the largest Roman estate in the Hochwald region to date. ‘The master of the house lived in the magnificent main building, while subordinate families lived in the smaller outbuildings of the adjacent farmyard. Based on our findings, we now have an idea of what this estate looked like. Social differences between families in the surrounding outbuildings are now clearly evident here,’ says Sabine Hornung.
The burial ground with the burial mounds was the burial site of these Romanised landowners, who lived in the Roman style but also proudly displayed their Celtic roots. ‘This is also illustrated by a Roman funerary monument from the middle of the second century AD discovered between the two burial mounds, on which the deceased and his wife are depicted in Celtic costume. For the people of that time, this was a clear statement,’ says Sabine Hornung.
Economically, too, the people living here displayed an almost defiant attitude. ‘We found quarries nearby where grinding stones and millstones were already being produced in Celtic times,’ says the archaeologist. This is unusual: "On the one hand, there were high-quality products made from basalt lava that were traded along the river. On the other hand, the local rock was of inferior quality and was actually only suitable for producing millstones to a very limited extent, especially as it was difficult to work with. Even for the construction of the Roman tomb, stones with pebble inclusions up to 15 centimetres thick were used," she explains. ‘Despite its poor quality, the local product was highly valued, even though we find lots of blanks in the quarries that broke during processing.’
After excavating the Celtic settlement, the archaeologist and her team are now working on dating it more precisely. ‘We will also use geophysical measurements to investigate the traces of a medieval motte near Lockweiler, i.e. a tower castle initially built of wood, which is the oldest of several castles in this region,’ explains Sabine Hornung. The grass grows better at the site of the former moat than in the surrounding area, so the motte is already clearly visible in aerial photographs. Initial research has already supported the finding that the complex underwent several phases of construction.
In Oberlöstern, information boards and 3D reconstructions now showcase the new findings of the Saarbrücken archaeologists and show interested visitors what the area looked like around 2000 years ago and how people lived here. The Saarland Ministry of Economics and Environment and the Merzig-Wadern Cultural Foundation supported this project by the town of Wadern. "In this way, the Celtic-Roman history of the region can be experienced directly at the archaeological monuments. When you stand on the site and imagine how magnificent the Roman estate in Oberlöstern must once have looked and how the Roman temple, visible from afar, towered over everyday life, you get closer to the people who lived here 2000 years ago in a way that is not possible anywhere else," says Sabine Hornung. Last year, a dream loop with information boards and reconstructions of the local military camp was opened in Hermeskeil, showcasing Sabine Hornung's research findings on the subject.
But her research has potential that goes far beyond promoting tourism, as Sabine Hornung emphasises: ‘This is about a time when the sovereign Celtic tribes were integrated into the Roman Empire, creating a political unity – and thus nothing less than the historical roots of what we now call Europe.’ Our society can learn a lot from history, including about potential challenges in the future. ‘The problems our society is struggling with today are by no means new. We can look back at how similar issues were dealt with in the past, which strategies worked and which did not,’ explains Sabine Hornung.
Questions can be addressed to:
Prof. Dr. Sabine Hornung, Universität des Saarlandes
Tel.: 0681 302 3121, E-Mail: sabine.hornung@uni-saarland.de
Press photographs:
Press photographs can be used free of charge with this press release or in connection with reports about Saarland University provided that a photo credit with the photographer’s name is included.
