Die urnenfelderzeitlichen Gräber des mittleren Lechtals – Forschungen zu den Bestattungssitten und Sozialstrukturen

Abstract

The dissertation presented here deals with 398 graves from the Urnfield period in the middle Lech valley. The working area lies between Augsburg and Hurlach and the rivers Lech and Wertach resp. Singold. A total of 311 graves, have been newly recorded, while the rest have been investigated by various authors, the majority of which were published monographically by S. Wirth in 1998. The aim of the PhD was a microregional investigation of the middle Lech valley, with emphasis on the study of burial customs and social structures. Special attention was paid to the question to what extent the richly furnished graves differed from the less richly furnished graves and on the basis of which criteria they can be defined as such and whether the social patterns changed in the course of time. This also involved investigating which types of burial rites and funerary furnishings corresponded to a „rule“ and which deviated from it. Another question was whether gender and age typical aspects of burial rites are discernible. These investigations refer to the size and location of the single raves within the necropoleis as well as to the grave constructions and taphonomic aspects.