Mödling-Jennyberg: A Hilltop Settlement of Boleráz Culture

1. Content of research project I have been started my studies with the Austrian Bolerz and classic Baden cultures in the frame of a Lise Meitner Grant in 2016. The aim of this Stand-Alone Project to process and evaluate the Bolerz hilltop settlement of MödlingJennyberg build upon the work of the former excavator and researcher Elisabeth Ruttkay. This topic beside its archaeological value is a mission for her to embalm the record of the site and her memory. 2. Hypotheses During the past decades, the assessment of the Bolerz culture/phase/episode has changed radically, and will undoubtedly change in the future too. Martin Furholt was the first to describe Bolerz as a pottery style. In my studies focusing on the territory of Hungary, I challenged the view that Bolerz should evidently be regarded as the organic antecedent, phase of classical Baden, and proposed three models of possible interactions between Bolerz and classical Baden. I suggested that Bolerz should be united under one phase instead of the former division into two phases (Ib and Ic phases). The revision of Hlinsko (an ongoing project in Moravia) revealed that what was formerly believed to have been a long-lived hilltop settlement occupied during the Bolerz Ia-b-c- Baden IIa-IIb-III was in fact a Baalberg site (during the occupation formerly labelled Bolerz Ia-b-c). The MödlingJennyberg site is the most important excavated Bolerz site in Austria, and there are countless remarkable finds that were recovered by amateur archaeologists before its professional investigation. Their description and evaluation on the current level of archaeological knowledge can provide valuable new information and contribute to a better understanding of Bolerz in Austria. 3. Methods Firstly, I intend to collect all finds, documents and information about the site and to prepare a new documentation conforming to modern standards. In addition to the Bolerz settlement, I plan to assess the finds from a still unpublished open settlement section near Jennyberg, a site lying at the foot of Frauenstein (Goldenen Stiege), where the cultures pits were uncovered during the excavation of an Avar cemetery, and to compare the two assemblages. I also intend to involve a new settlement part not far from Mödling in BrunnWolfholz with some Bolerz pits. If I can identify the excavation site and if the situation calls for it, I plan to conduct a new survey (LIDAR). This short and non-invasive survey method can provide a wealth of new data supplementing earlier information. I plan to examine in detail the pottery and the lithic finds together with their petrographic analysis. Analysed bone finds with a secure context can be submitted to radiocarbon dating, and the dates can be integrated into the absolute chronological database of the Austrian Baden complex. 4. Originality The MödlingJennyberg site was one of the most important excavations and projects of Elisabeth Ruttkay, who sadly died before she could evaluate the site. This would have been the first monograph of a professionally excavated Bolerz hilltop settlement in Austria. There are very few excavated Bolerz sites and the number of published sites is even less. The name of MödlingJennyberg became synonymous with the Austrian type site of Bolerz during the past few decades. It would be an immense loss to archaeological scholarship if the site and its wealth of information would be forgotten in the lack of their publication. 1

The remnants of the prehistoric hilltop settlement on the Jennyberg overlooking the NW fringes of Mödling have since long been known to the town's population, who had grown wine grapes on the sunny hilltop plateau covered with good-quality chernozem since the 1200s. The site was investigated on several occasions from the earlier 20. century, both by local enthusiasts and professional archaeologists. The destruction wrought by the quarry, which on the testimony of the documentary evidence had been active from the 1600s, and the investigation of the site were parallel processes, not unlike a neck and neck race, although, regrettably, the balance almost invariably tipped towards quarry and the destruction of the site. The situation went from bad to worse in the early 1900s, when the area's quarries passed from imperial and municipal ownership into private hands. Industrial development and privatisation led to even more intense quarrying, speeding up the damage sustained by the site, until the local council closed down the quarry in the 1980s. The settlement occupied by the Bolerz culture and the Leithaprodersdorf group is today a scheduled monument. The deeps scars left by the quarry on the northern, eastern and southern side of the plateau will remain an eternal testimony to the greed with which modern humans prey on their ancestors' land and the settlement on it. The prehistoric site was first investigated by Franz Skribany, founder of the museum Mödling, which still welcomes visitors today. Following an early excavation report published in 1904, Skribany was able to raise sufficient local interest in the site by the 1930s that would enable him to conduct systematic excavations on the Jennyberg. The next excavation on the Jennyberg was conducted by Otto Seewald, who published a brief report on the investigations in 1941. The next archaeological exploration of the plateau was undertaken in the 1950s by Franz Waldner, a speleologist working in the local museum. While they did publish brief reports of their work on the Jennyberg, they did not undertake a detailed assessment of the finds taken to the storerooms of the Mödling Museum. Following a longer pause in the site's investigation, a systematic excavation of the Jennyberg site was begun by Elisabeth Ruttkay of the Natural History Museum in two successive campaigns in 1970 and 1971. She succeeded in locating the trenches opened during previous investigations. Ruttkay published two papers on the prehistoric settlement, one covering the Bolerz occupation of the Late Neolithic, the other describing the settlement of the Early Bronze Age Leithaprodersdorf group on the hilltop site. Regrettably, she too failed to publish an assessment of site and its features uncovered during the excavation alongside a detailed description of the finds.