Stillfried at the transition from Urnfield to Hallstatt

The goal of the presented project is the work up of the late Urnfield/early Hallstatt Period finds and findings stemming from the fortified site of Stillfried/M. The question of the transition from the late Bronze Age (Urnfield Culture) to that of the Hallstatt Culture in Central European prehistoric research, specifically as it pertains to the body of knowledge of the forms and their characterisations, is of fundamental importance. The excavation finds and findings to date present the expectation that the entire transition period from the Urnfield Culture to the Hallstatt Culture will be represented at the fortified site at Stillfried. A simultaneous effort should be made to fix the inception of this site at the beginning of the Hallstatt Culture. The direct comparison with relevant, contemporaneous settlements from the same geographic region, (like Thunau in the central Kamp Valley, and a comparison of the similar ceramic record produced from the important, burial grounds of the Stillffied-Podoli-Val II/Chotin region of the central Danubian Urnfield Period for example) should support and clarify the validity of the current archaeological chronology. Scientific examination of this site should deepen the archaeologically developed picture of an important trade and handcraft centre at the transition from the Urnfield to the Hallstatt Periods. Finally, based upon the results of experimental firing tests conducted in a laboratory, it is believed that findings should be able to be replicated through field trials.

Since its discovery in 1874, the enclosure system at Stillfried an der March (Lower Austria) straddling two epochs (Urnfield and Hallstatt cultures) as it does, has been a place of transregional importance for Central European prehistoric research. Systematic excavations over twenty years have brought to light an enormous archaeological resource, the scientific analysis of which has only just begun. Based on preparatory work tooted ina broad interdisziplinarity, the present project aimed to record an analyse the finds of theat period in which the setllement reached its peak, the last phase of the Urnfiled culture (around 800 B.C.). The transition to Hallstatt culture was of great interest, because the settlement evidently survived despite socio-political an economic turbulance. From the starting point of the impotant finds secource from Stillfried, the project aimed to analyse more closely the much discussed problem of differentiating between the archaological periods Hallstatt B and Hallstatt C, as well as the characterisation of the transitional period and the general question of "cultural change at an epochal boundary". Employed therby were not only topological comparative methods such as computer-supported seriation and new C14 analysis to date the relative chronology. In addition exsperimental archaeolgical and mineralogical analysis was able to broaden knowledge of local pottery production to include technological aspects. Unusual discoveries such as (probably ritual) animal burials or human skelettal finds in settlement pits demanded close cooperation with archaeozoological and paleoanthropological resaerch, further rounding off the historical picture of Stillfried as a significant economic and ploitical centre of settlement at the transition from the Urnfield to the Hallstatt period.