Resource management, power and cult at Stillfried (900-750 BC)?

by Monika Griebl (monika.griebl@oeaw.ac.at)

The project ‘Resource management, power and cult at Stillfried (900–750 BC)?’, funded by the Austrian Research Fund from 1.11.2015 to 31.10.2018, is lead by Michaela Lochner and conducted by Monika Griebl with the help of Benedikt Biederer and Tanja Jachs at the Institute for Oriental and European Archaeology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna.

The project aims to answer the question whether the hillfort of Stillfried in Lower Austria functioned as a centralized storage site for grain during the Late Bronze Age Urnfield Culture. The impetus for these considerations was provided by the noticeable high density of at least 100 pits with characteristic trapezoidal profile discovered in the course of archaeological excavations between 1969 and 1989 at the highest elevation of the fortified area. These features, measuring 4 m3 on average, were dug into the loess and display a horizontal bottom and a bottleneck opening. According to our hypothesis all of these pits were used as grain storage facilities (granaries) in their primary function. Feature No. V0643 at Stillfried is representative of such a function since a layer of grain was preserved on the bottom level of the pit. In the course of their abandonment, the pits were filled quickly and intentionally as shown by their stratigraphy. The stratigraphy plays a crucial role in answering the question of whether depositional patterns existed. We systematically record the complete history of the pits: findings from the primary construction phase of the storage pit (e.g. wall plastering), the utilization phase (e.g. impressions of climbing trees used as ladders), the deliberate infill (finds, find-combinations, location) and perhaps later interventions. Using these data, Tanja Jachs displays the profiles of the pits in a new way, subdivided into pit horizons (bottom, deposition-horizon, upper pit filling), with pictograms of the finds.

Ethnographic observations provide valuable information on the wide and differentiated use of storage pits. One of the core findings is that recovering only part of the stored cereal from such large storage pits, sealed under air-tight conditions, is not possible since the quality of the remaining quantity suffers. Numerous scientific analyses are carried out in the course of the project to support the investigations (Sr-isotopes, C14, botanical, zoological and anthropological analyses).


Field of barley (©Monika Griebl)

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