The Roman Cemetery of Halbturn

Since 1988, a necropole from the Roman period, which was the cemetery of a villa rustica (a Roman estate), is being excavated in Halbturn (Burgenland). Use of the cemetery began in the second century in the form of cremation burials and so-called "grave enclosures". Inhumation burials of newly born children are also assigned to this phase. At the end of the third century the rite of inhumation burial, with a variety of grave types, was adopted. The most recent graves appear to date to the middle of the fifth century and show germanic influences in the archaeological material. The grave enclosures of the earlier cremation cemetery were located by means of geophysical methods. Numerous buildings belonging to the villa rustica were discovered and measured from the air, some of them were also examined by means of geophysical methods. With the help of the natural sciences, it has been possible to reconstruct the environment at Halbturn. The first volume of studies on Halbturn has already been submitted for publication. In the last application for research at Halbturn (1994), the excavation of the necropole was estimated to require four campaigns altogether. In the course of this project, the third and fourth excavation campaign under the supervision of Mag.Dr. Gabriele Scharrer shall take place and the archaeological examination of the skeletal and plant remains, as well as the archaeometallurgical studies, should be completed. An interpretation of the results of the excavation in terms of cultural history will be attempted.

The aim of the project is the reconstruction of the social structure of a late antique rural settlement with its economic organisation, community arrangement, religious history and ethnic background. The bases for answering the questions related to these topics are the excavations of the late antique cemetery at Halbturn (Burgenland) and the processing of its find material. The archaeological excavations of the cemetery began in 1998 and have since been supported by more FWF projects. In the years 2000-2002 two excavation-campaigns took place; the area of the cemetery has almost completely been excavated. The size of the excavated area is 3305m2. In this area there were 26 inhumation graves, 71 cremation burials, numerous postholes and pits, structures presumably belonging to the foundations of a grave- monument and more ditches found. Parallel to the excavations the documentation of the excavated finds and features has also been started. This serves as a basis for the following archaeological interpretation. The bones from the inhumation and cremation burials have been documented with the methods of physical anthropology. The long-term aim of the physical anthropological analysis is to obtain information on the characteristics of the population and to find out more about its living conditions and way of life. The animal bones have been described with the methods of archaeozoology. From this data it is intended to obtain a general picture of the late antique animal world and to draw conclusions about the importance of certain animal species in the nutrition of a late antique rural population. With the archaeozoological analysis the role of different animal species in the funerary ritual could also be investigated. The archaeobotanical investigation of the plant remainders has also been carried out. In an ideal case this data makes a reconstruction of the late antique environment possible, first of all concerning the vegetation. On the basis of this information it is also possible to draw conclusions about the agriculture of the Roman Period in our region, about plant based food remains in graves, or about plant remains deposited in graves for ritual purposes etc. The ceramic-, metal- and glass finds have been documented both with traditional and digital methods. The drawings of all finds have been scanned and can so be used for the typological and statistical analysis in the form of a picture database. The drawings of more hundred excavated features have been digitised with the help of the software AutoCAD. In this way it was made possible to import this data to a geographical information system (GIS) during the analysis of the excavations. In the GIS the digitised drawings can also be linked to other relevant data, such as the catalogue of finds. This opens completely new perspectives for the cemetery analysis, as in this way the spatial distribution of any given category of finds can be interactively mapped and investigated. Furthermore using GIS provides better opportunities for the archaeological interpretation of the results of statistical analyses concerning spatial and chronological distribution. The analysis of the cemetery concentrates on more main topics: the analysis of the funerary traditions and of the finds (typology and chronology), social and ethnic structure of the cemetery, historical background, main features of the settlement history and the reconstruction of an economic model. The research on these topics should be a synthesis of the already existing interpretation of the archaeomagnetic prospection and of the cemetery analysis concerning the structure of the population. The first results show that the large-scale excavations are worth the invested time and financial means. This can be best shown by the child-graves of Halbturn. In most cemeteries of the Roman Period child graves are missing or are underrepresented. In contrast to that in Halbturn child graves have made up one third of all graves. The high number of child graves is a result of the well-chosen excavation method and of the excavation of the full cemetery. The newly acquired information on this age group is very important. The groups of child graves within the cemetery and the special location of some child graves provide information about the structure of the cemetery on the basis of social aspects. As far as it can be seen at present, at least three factors have played a role in these phenomena. The first factor is the age of the child at the time of its death: If the child died within the first six months of its life, it was buried with a ritual differing from that of other graves (during the chronological phase of the cremation burials). These young children were buried without grave goods and with a simple burial rite. The second factor that is most probably to be observed in the burial rite is the disability of the child. As a third factor the position of the family of the child within the local society has played a role in the selection of the place of the grave, of the burial rite and of the grave goods.