Heuneburg

Aerial view of Heuneburg and the Danube River

Guest post by Manuel Fernández-Götz

Thanks to extensive research projects carried out in recent years, we now know that the first urban and proto-urban of centers Temperate Europe developed between the end of the 7th century BC and the 5th century BC in an area stretching from Závist in Bohemia to Bourges in central France. Amongst these ‘centers of power’ that preceded the Late Iron Age oppida by several centuries, the most intensively investigated site is the Heuneburg in southern Germany (Fig. 1). In the mid-5th century BC, the Greek historian Herodotus of Halicarnassus wrote in his famous work Histories (II, 33): “The Istros [Danube] river arises among the Celts and the polis of Pyrene, cutting Europe across the middle.” It has been suggested that Pyrene, the polis mentioned here, is Heuneburg, and that this is the first time that a city in Central Europe is mentioned by name.

Greek pottery from Heuneburg excavations

While this reference cannot be proved, archaeologist have shown that the Early Iron Age Heuneburg was a substantial settlement that flourished politically and economically. Its residents had extensive connections with areas as far away as Etruria and the Greek colonies (Fig. 2). The most striking feature was the discovery of a mudbrick wall based on Mediterranean prototypes and probably erected in about 600 BC.

Artists reconstruction of the Heuneburg urban center

Burial mound at the site

For a long time it was thought that the settlement at Heuneburg was mainly confined to the 3 hectares of the central hilltop. However, new work in the last 20 years has radically changed this picture. More than just a small hillfort, in the first half of the 6th century BC we are looking at an enormous settlement of 100 hectares with an estimated population of around 5,000 inhabitants. The entire site was, in fact, divided into three areas: the citadel (hilltop plateau), the walled lower town, and the outer settlement (Fig. 3). Moreover, from the beginning the settlement at Heuneburg was surrounded by numerous burial mounds which served as last resting places for members of the social elite and their relatives (Fig. 4).

Monumental stone gate

The fortifications around the lower town were impressive, and a monumental stone gate was recently excavated at the site (Fig. 5). The extent of the settlement, the presence of imposing monumental structures as well as indications of significant differences in social status and specialised production, justifies categorising Heuneburg as a ‘town’, at least for the period of the mudbrick wall (c. 600 - 540 BC). But it is important to realise that the extent and the significance of the Early Iron Age site continued to change throughout its less than 200-year occupation. Indeed, the various building phases, fires, and constant restructuring are testimony to an eventful existence with dynamic social changes.

Some references in English:

Local painted pottery

Arnold, Bettina

2010    Eventful Archaeology, the Heuneburg Mud-B rick Wall and the Early Iron Age of Southwest Germany. In Eventful Archaeologies: New Approaches to Social Transformation in the Archaeological Record, edited by Douglas J. Bolender, pp. 176-186. SUNY Press, Albany.

Fernández Götz, Manuel A. and Dirk Krausse

2012    Heuneburg: First City North of the Alps. World Archaeology 5 (7): 28-34.

2013    Rethinking Early Iron Age Urbanisation in Central Europe: The Heuneburg Site and its Archaeological Environment. Antiquity (in press).

Early urbanization in Europe north of the Alps

Reconstructed fortification at Heuneburg

Greetings from Stuttgart, Germany. I have been attending a very interesting conference on Eurasian cultural developments between 800 BC and 400 BC. Today one of the conference organizers, Manuel Fernández-Götz, took me to see two early urban sites: Heuneburg and Heidengraben. They are in the state of Baden-Wurttemburg, within a couple of hours of Stuttgart by car. Heuneburg is a fascinating site and very important for understanding pre-Roman urban development in Europe north of the Alps. As we left the site was thinking I should post an entry on the site, but then I realized that Manuel could do a much better job than I could. He agreed, and his post will appear soon. So now I will just give a few impressions of the conference and the sites (and perhaps of the tasty local food), leaving the major description of Heuneburg to Manuel. Stay tuned.....

Here is some context. The old view of Iron Age Europe was that this was the setting for warlike barbarians who constantly fought one another until the Romans brought peace, civilization, and cities to the area. This view was based more on Classical authors than on archaeology. Julius Ceasar conquered many of these "barbarian" groups when he conquered Gaul in the 50s BC, and he described the larger settlements as "Oppida," meaning a large fortified settlement. Over the past century archaeologists excavated many Oppida sites, and many of these have urban functions that justify their classification as urban settlements (see my prior discussions of urban definitions:  Here  and Here ). Some of the archaeologists who contributed to this work were at the Stuttgart conference. including old hands like John Collis and Peter Wells and younger scholars like Manuel. The Oppida vary greatly, and this remains an enigmatic form of settlement.

Reconstructed gate at Heidengraben

The site of Heidengraben, which we visited today, is the largest oppida, but much of the settlement consisted of apparently empty land within a large walled enclosure. We could see some of the walls and formal gated entrances. Lost of people were out and about today, walking their dogs, cross-country skiing, and sledding on the slopes. The gate and everything else was covered with snow.

Gold jewelry from an elite burial, Heuneburg

Much more spectacular than Heidengraben is Heuneburg, which dates to the Early Iron Age, or Hallstatt period, centuries earlier. Excavations at Heuneburg long ago revealed fortifications, elite burial mounds called tumuli, imported goods and houses. But more recent work directed by Dirk Krausse (a co-organizer of the conference) has added some key attributes of social complexity and urbanism, including a very rich child burial (which suggests that wealth and status were inherited, not just acquired within an individual's lifetime); the existence of a very large "suburban" area of houses in walled compounds at the base of the fortified hill. Manuel Fernández-Götz and Dirk Krausse have written an article, now in press in the journal Antiquity, that argues for the urban status of Heuneburg. If the site was indeed an urban center, it would make it the earliest urban site north of the Alps. I agree with their evidence and interpretations, but I will let Manuel describe the site and its urban aspects in more detail in his upcoming post.

The conference explored urbanization, social complexity, political organization, and processes of individualization throughout Eurasia during the Early Iron Age (800-400 BC). It was fascinating and I learned a lot and got excited about these sites. My role was to give a talk on the concept of urbanism and how it is studied by archaeologists.

The conference participants were also given a guided tour of a fantastic museum exhibit, "The World of the Celts." This exhibit has many of the important early Iron Age finds that we saw in the slides of conferenece participants, including the gold jewelry pictured above.

One final observation at the end of an excellent trip to Stuttgart: The State of Baden-Wurttenburg really supports archaeology well. The citizens are very interested in their past, turning out in thousands to see the two museum exhibits on the Celts and visiting the sites in the region. The state cultural office has a staff of hundreds, carrying out excavations (with sophisticated and rigorous methods) mounting museum exhibits, and other activities.And one final, final observation: the food in this region is fantastic.


Here are a few sources on the Oppida, emphasizing English-language works:

Collis, John R.

1984      Oppida: Earliest Towns North of the Alps. University of Sheffield Press, Sheffield.

1997      The European Iron Age. Routledge, London.

Fichtl, Stephan

2005      La ville celtique: Les oppida de 150 avant J.-C. à 15 après J.-C. Revised ed. Errance, Paris.

Pitts, Martin

2010      Re-Thinking the Southern British Oppida: Networks, Kingdoms and Material Culture. European Journal of Archaeology 13:32-63.

Wells, Peter

2011      The Iron Age. In European Prehistory: A Survey, edited by Sarunas Milisauskas, pp. 405-460. 2nd ed. Springer, New York.

Woolf, Greg D.

1993      Rethinking the Oppida. Oxford Journal of Archaeology 12:223-234.

Myths of the urban revolution

The phrase “Urban Revolution” was coined in the 1930s by archaeologist V. Gordon Childe to describe the transformation of Neolithic village farming society into the urban states and empires of the Bronze Age. Prior to the Urban Revolution there were no kings, no cities, no writing systems, and no social classes. This was perhaps the most extensive and far-reaching social transformation in human history, with greater implications for life and society than either the Industrial Revolution or the Neolithic Revolution (yes, I know, historical sociologists will not believe that anything was more important than the Industrial Revolution).

Today, archaeologists have quite a bit of information about the Urban Revolution, which happened independently in several parts of the ancient world. For background and discussion, see Childe (1950), Smith (2009), Trigger (2003), or Johnson and Earle (2000). The Urban Revolution is not just about the origin of cities; instead it describes a broader set of social transformations, of which urbanization was only one component. (I realize that other writers and websites have used the phrase “urban revolution” to mean widely divergent things, but Childe’s usage dates to 1936, so archaeology wins out by precedent).

So, what are the myths of the urban revolution? I use this phrase to describe things that many people think are true, when in fact they are errors. Here is the big myth of the urban revolution:

• ·        The urban revolution represented  progress for human life, with things improving for individuals and society.

It turns out that archaeology and anthropology have accumulated quite a bit of evidence showing that this was not a positive transformation for most people in most societies. Here is what happened to life and society after the Urban Revolution:

1.      People had to work harder to make a living.

2.      People had less freedom and self-determination.

3.      Human health went into a nose-dive: people had more diseases and lifespan was lowered.

4.      Violence and chaos increased in many cases.

Points 1-3 are strongly supported by considerable empirical evidence. Indeed, these are the kinds of things that get asked on exams in introductory anthropology classes. Point 4, as phrased here, is more controversial, but it includes an important insight often ignored by political scientists and economists—that social order was typically maintained in pre-state and non-state societies. Let’s review these points a bit:

1.      People had to work harder to make a living. Ethnographers have shown that modern hunter-gatherers spend LESS TIME making a living than farmers, and that tribal (not-state) farmers spend LESS TIME to produce the food they need than their peasant descendants after the Urban Revolution. This may seem counter-intuitive: weren’t hunters living at the edge of starvation until farming made life easy for everyone? Well, ethnographers have timed people as they live their lives, and hunter-gatherers put in less time to feed their families than do farmers. And after the Urban Revolution, people not only had to feed their families, they also had to produce a surplus to pay rent and taxes, which made them work longer hours. Archaeological research supports this model, showing, for example, that time-consuming agricultural features (e.g., irrigation canals, or hillside terraces) were generally built AFTER the Urban Revolution. They weren’t needed before then.

2.      People had less freedom. People in tribal societies had considerable freedom to live their lives as they saw fit.  In tribal society there are no leaders with coercive power, no laws or written regulations, no police force. If a family is dissatisfied with life in their group, they can leave and move elsewhere.

3.      Human health went into a nose-dive: people had more diseases and lifespan was lowered. Archaeologists can monitor ancient health and nutritional status by studies of the human skeleton from burials (this field is called bioarchaeology, or human osteology). Populations after the Urban Revolution had higher incidences of many diseases, they had more skeletal markers for childhood deficiencies of protein and other nutrients, and the average age at death went down. There are several reasons for this: diets were less varied, life in cities increased the level of communicable diseases (from dense and unsanitary conditions), and poverty increased. For discussion of points 1-3, see Johnson and Earle (2000), or a textbook such as Harris (1983), or Trigger (2003).

4.      Violence and chaos increased in many cases. This is the only one of my four points that is at all controversial. The extent, nature, and implications of ancient and non-western warfare are currently the subject of extensive debates. These debates draw on archaeological data, ethnographic observations, history, and theoretical models from ecology and economics. My own reading of the evidence is that warfare increased after the Urban Revolution (because states find more reasons to go to war, and their wars are larger scale and more deadly than tribal warfare).

But whether or not I am correct about levels of warfare, one aspect of point #4 is not controversial at all: non-state peoples maintained social order. Life was not chaotic or violent prior to states, and Thomas Hobbes was just plain wrong in calling life in the state of nature (i.e., outside of states) “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Now I realize that some prominent modern scholars have claimed that pre-state life was chaotic and violent. Nobel Prize winner Dougas North and his colleagues, for example, have built a model for social change that posits chaos before the state (North et al. 2009a, b). Life was so chaotic and violent that nothing was accomplished (in their terms, there was little economic growth). So elites had to step in and establish laws and private property and formal government to reduce the endemic violence that Hobbes had described. I’m sorry, but this is just plain incorrect.

My suggestion for anyone who wants to believe in the violence of non-state society is to read some ethnography. This is pretty basic, low-level stuff in the field of anthropology; any student in an introductory cultural anthropology class can probably rattle off the ethnographic evidence for social order and control in tribal society, and the social mechanisms by which order is maintained. If you don’t want to take an intro anthropology class, then try a few of these works: (Harris 1983, 1989; Roberts 1979; Taylor 1982). Or check out Sillitoe and Kuwimb’s (2010) critique of one of Jared Diamond’s recent controversial papers.

So, if the social changes of the Urban Revolution were the opposite of progress (“De-evolution”?? Devo?), then why did it happen at all? Why aren’t we all still hunter-gatherers, or tribal farmers? Good questions. I’m out of space now, so I’ll duck this one for the moment. Let me just say that this is a big research question in modern archaeology.

References:

Childe, V. Gordon

1950    The Urban Revolution. Town Planning Review 21:3-17.

Harris, Marvin

1983    Cultural Anthropology. Harper and Row, New York.

1989    Life Without Chiefs. New Age Journal Nov/Dec: 42-45, 205-209.

Johnson, Allen W. and Timothy K. Earle

2000    The Evolution of Human Societies: From Foraging Group to Agrarian State. 2nd ed. Stanford University Press, Stanford.

North, Douglass C., John J. Wallis, and Barry R. Weingast

2009a  Violence and Social Orders: A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History. Cambridge University Press, New York.

2009b  Violence, Natural States, and Open Access Orders. Journal of Democracy 20(1):55-68.

Roberts, Simon

1979    Order and Dispute: An Introduction to Legal Anthropology. St. Martin's Press, New York.

Sillitoe, Paul and Mako John Kuwimb

2010    Rebutting Jared Diamond's Savage Portrait: What Tribal Societies Can Tell us About Justice and Liberty. StinkyJournalism .Org website:published online.  http://www.stinkyjournalism.org/latest-journalism-news-updates-170.php.

Smith, Michael E.

2009    V. Gordon Childe and the Urban Revolution: An Historical Perspective on a Revolution in Urban Studies. Town Planning Review 80:3-29.

Taylor, Michael

1982    Community, Anarchy and Liberty. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Trigger, Bruce G.

2003    Understanding Early Civilizations: A Comparative Study. Cambridge University Press, New York.