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Rare Early Alemannic grave found in southern Germany
The grave of an Alemannic man dating to the late 3rd or early 4th century A.D. has been unearthed in the village of Gerstetten, southern Germany. This is a rare find for the area, as very few early Alemannic graves have been discovered in the state of Baden-Württemberg, and previous graves were not as elaborate as this one. They were also in small groups of five to 12 burials, whereas so far this grave is the only one and in a very prominent location.
Gerstetten is about 40 miles east of Stuttgart, which was founded in the 1st century as Cannstatt Castrum, a large Roman fort built to guard an important trade route and crossing on the Neckar river. The Upper Germanic Limes ran immediately east of Cannstatt at that time, but were moved 20 miles closer to Gerstetten in the middle of the 2nd century. That put the village about halfway between the large fort and civilian settlement at Cannstatt and the smaller fort of Castellum Guntia, modern-day Günzburg, on the Danube. The Alemanni invaded the area in 233 A.D., and the Limes fell around 260 A.D. The Alemanni tribe fully settled the area in the 5th century after Rome left for good.
The Alemannic grave was discovered during a rescue excavation in Gerstetten’s historic center before construction of new affordable housing. The site was known to have been inhabited in antiquity, triggering a preventative archaeology survey, but no graves had been found there before.
The deceased was a man of around 60 years old. The chamber grave was finely constructed out of wood (now decomposed) and contained high quality grave goods, including ceramic vessels, a fine-toothed comb and a glass beaker of exceptional quality comparable to one found at Guntia. The style of the ceramics indicate they were manufactured further north in what is today central Germany.
The two ceramic vessels have been removed from the grave and transported to the State Office for Monument Preservation laboratory in nearby Esslingen where conservators have recomposed them from the broken fragments. The skeletal remains and other grave goods are being examined and documented by ArchaeoBW, the archaeological contractors who excavated the site, except for one rib which was sent to Mannheim for radiocarbon dating. The results indicate he was buried between 263 and 342 A.D.
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