Archaeologists in the German city of Bielefeld have uncovered the remains of a Late Iron Age farmstead dating back more than 2,000 years, revealing traces of a substantial timber house, smaller buildings and possible cooking installations.
The settlement was discovered during archaeological investigations ahead of the construction of a new apartment building on Grünberger Straße in Bielefeld-Stieghorst.
Its position on a small hill overlooking the Baderbach stream had already attracted the attention of archaeologists from LWL Archaeology for Westphalia, who arranged for groundworks at the development site to be monitored.
Those precautions paid off when excavations revealed part of a farmstead dating from between the third and first centuries BC.
A 20-metre-long Iron Age house
At the centre of the discovery are the remains of a large timber building measuring approximately 20 metres long and seven metres wide.
Although the wooden structure itself has disappeared, the positions of its posts survive as discolourations in the soil, allowing archaeologists to reconstruct its original layout.
Particularly important are pairs of posts positioned in a line beneath the ridge of the roof. This construction technique is characteristic of houses dating to the Late Iron Age and has helped researchers establish the age of the settlement.
Two entrances opposite one another in the middle of the house opened onto a central passageway, dividing the structure into eastern and western sections.
According to archaeologists, this form of architecture appeared in Westphalia at the beginning of the Late Iron Age and represents a predecessor of the Germanic longhouses that became established in the region during subsequent centuries.
The farmstead is thought to be roughly 300 years older than a Germanic settlement previously discovered at Bielefeld-Sieker, about 1.2 kilometres to the west.
Outbuildings and possible cooking areas
The main house was not standing alone. Archaeologists identified at least four smaller outbuildings and recovered pottery fragments characteristic of the period.
One particularly intriguing feature consisted of three concentrations of ceramics and stones positioned in a row within the farmyard. Layers of burnt material were found beneath them.
The installations had been shallowly dug into the ground and archaeologists believe they may have been used for preparing or cooking food.
Together, the structures provide a glimpse of a working agricultural household occupied more than two millennia ago.
The surrounding landscape would have offered favourable conditions for such a settlement. Nearby streams and springs supplied readily accessible water, while the area's loess soils were well suited to agriculture.
“The location of the construction site was the deciding factor for the archaeological monitoring of the earthworks,” said Dr Sven Spiong, head of the Bielefeld branch of LWL Archaeology for Westphalia.
The northern edge of the Teutoburg Forest is already known for its unusually high concentration of archaeological sites.
“There is a high probability that several settlements from different eras lie along every stream that flows down here,” said Sebastian Düvel, scientific adviser at the LWL.
Who lived at the farmstead?
Archaeologists associate communities inhabiting East Westphalia and neighbouring parts of Lower Saxony during the centuries BC with what researchers call the Eilshausen Group, named after an archaeological site at Hiddenhausen-Eilshausen.
The group is identified archaeologically through distinctive cremation burials and the objects placed in graves.
However, researchers stress that these communities were not isolated. Archaeological evidence indicates connections with the Jastorf culture to the north-east and, particularly from the third century BC onwards, increasing contacts with the Celtic world.
The newly excavated Bielefeld farmstead could therefore help researchers better understand how these communities lived, built their homes and organised agricultural settlements during the centuries immediately preceding the Roman period.
4,000-year-old arrowhead points to earlier activity
The Iron Age farmstead was not the earliest evidence of human activity found at the site.
Archaeologists also discovered a finely worked flint arrowhead dating from the Late Neolithic or Bronze Age.
At approximately 4,000 years old, it predates the farmstead by nearly two millennia and suggests that people were visiting or occupying the area long before the Iron Age settlement was established.
The discovery adds another chapter to an increasingly detailed archaeological picture of the Bielefeld region, where favourable soils, fresh water and the landscape along the Teutoburg Forest attracted communities over thousands of years.
For researchers, the newly uncovered farmstead is another piece of evidence showing how settlement patterns in the region developed long before the emergence of the Germanic communities recorded in later centuries.
Sources : Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe