Sag mir, wo die Siedlungen sind – frühmittelalterliche Fundstellen in den südwestfälischen Mittelgebirgen und ihr keramisches Fundgut

Abstract

Tell Me Where the Settlements Are. Early Medieval Sites in the South-western Westphalian Uplands and Their Pottery

In this paper four recently excavated Early Medieval settlements in the south-western Westphalian Uplands, as well as their pottery finds, are investigated exemplarily as to their locational factors and are presented in some detail. One can arrive at a conclusion that the positioning of the sites very close to a flooded area and in three of the four cases covered by colluvial sediments made their discovery through surface finds difficult or even impossible. The masking of the sites offers an explanatory approach for the fact that hitherto we have been able to record comparatively few significant archaeological sites from the Early Medieval period through surface finds (of pottery). Furthermore, the contemporary hand-made pottery of older periods is quite difficult to differentiate, so that a dating of the sites in all cases was possible only through wheel-turned pottery mostly imported from the Rhineland or the Hesse region. A review of the ceramics brought the first indications that in the south-western Westphalian slate uplands during the Early Middle Ages wheel-turned rounded jars were produced using local materials, including slate as tempering.