The tomb, which is believed to date back to the 4th century. in the first half, the remains of a dead man aged around 60 were found. It was found in May during excavations ahead of the construction of a new house in the center of the village of Gerstetten, about 40 miles (64 km) east of the city of Stuttgart in southwestern Germany. says a statement from the Stuttgart Regional Council.
The tomb was reportedly elaborately furnished and surrounded by a wooden chamber, and was in a lonely but highly visible location.
Among the burials, one glass goblet is of particularly high quality and may have come from the nearby Roman fort at Guntia (now Günzburg), while the distinctive features of the other burials suggest that they came from the Elbe-Saale region further north in what is now central Germany.
Barbarian Germania
The northern limit of the Roman Empire in this region – the so-called “Upper Germania” – ran north of Gerstetten, beyond which lay the lands known as “Magna Germania” or Greater Germania, inhabited by Germanic tribes.
The territory under Roman control was strictly guarded by legionnaires stationed in forts on the border, such as the Guntija fort, but outside the forts a Germanic way of life – and burial – was practiced.
The Romans called the Germans barbarians, a Greek word originally meaning “people who spoke differently” that they applied to non-Romans living outside their territory. After the 5th century Germanic barbarians led by Visigoths and Vandals invaded Roman lands in the south and hastened the collapse of the empire.
Restoration works
The man buried in Gerstetten is said to be likely one of the Alemanni, a federation of Germanic tribes whose people lived near the Upper Rhine Valley. Alemannic graves of that time are rarely found in the region. They are usually found in groups of 5 to 12 individuals, and archaeologists believe that two more tombs may still be found in the surrounding area.
Artifacts from the Germanic cemetery in Gerstetten have been transported to a restoration workshop in the nearby city of Esslingen.
The human bones still remain in the grave – for archaeologists to record – but a sample of one of the deceased’s ribs has been taken and radiocarbon dating carried out at a laboratory in the city of Mannheim. The results show that the man was buried between 263 and 342 AD, according to Live Science.
2024-09-06 19:21:34