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Posterior Archaeomagnetic Dating: an Example from the Early Medieval Site Thunau Am Kamp, Austria Elisabeth Schnepp, Martin Obenaus, Philippe Lanos

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Posterior Archaeomagnetic Dating: an Example from the Early Medieval Site Thunau Am Kamp, Austria Elisabeth Schnepp, Martin Obenaus, Philippe Lanos Posterior archaeomagnetic dating: An example from the Early Medieval site Thunau am Kamp, Austria Elisabeth Schnepp, Martin Obenaus, Philippe Lanos To cite this version: Elisabeth Schnepp, Martin Obenaus, Philippe Lanos. Posterior archaeomagnetic dating: An example from the Early Medieval site Thunau am Kamp, Austria. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, Elsevier, 2015, 2, pp.688-698. 10.1016/j.jasrep.2014.12.002. insu-01200757 HAL Id: insu-01200757 https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-01200757 Submitted on 26 Oct 2015 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 2 (2015) 688–698 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports journal homepage: http://ees.elsevier.com/jasrep Posterior archaeomagnetic dating: An example from the Early Medieval site Thunau am Kamp, Austria Elisabeth Schnepp a,⁎, Martin Obenaus b,1,PhilippeLanosc,d a Montanuniversität Leoben, Lehrstuhl für Geophysik, Paläomagnetiklabor Gams, Gams 45, A-8130 Frohnleiten, Austria b Universität Wien, Institut für Urgeschichte und Historische Archäologie, Franz-Klein-Gasse 1, A-1190 Wien, Austria c Centre de Recherches en Physique Appliquée à l'Archéologie, UMR 5060, Université de Bordeaux 3, CNRS, Campus de Beaulieu, CS 74205, 35042 Rennes Cedex, France d UMR 6118, Université de Rennes 1, CNRS, Campus de Beaulieu, CS 74205, 35042 Rennes Cedex, France article info abstract Article history: The Early Medieval valley settlement of Thunau am Kamp in Lower Austria has been under archaeological Received 14 September 2014 excavation for 10 years. The site was occupied during the 9th and 10th centuries AD according to potsherds, Received in revised form 24 November 2014 which seem to indicate two phases of activity: in the older phase ovens were placed in the corners of houses Accepted 15 December 2014 while during the younger phase they are found in the middle of the wall. The present study has been conducted Available online 29 December 2014 in order to increase the archaeomagnetic database and fill the temporal gap around 900 AD. For this purpose 14 ovens have been sampled for their paleaomagnetic signals. Laboratory treatment generally confirmed that Keywords: Archaeomagnetism the baked clay has preserved stable directions. Apart from one exception, all the mean characteristic remanent Dating magnetisation directions are concentrated on the Early Medieval part of the directional archaeomagnetic Early Middle Ages reference curve of Austria at about 900 AD. Using this curve archaeomagnetic dating provides ages between Thunau am Kamp 800 and 1100 AD, which are in agreement with the archaeological dating. Together with the archaeological Austria age estimates and stratigraphic information the new data have been included into the database of the Austrian curve and it has been recalculated using a new version of RenCurve. The new data confine the curve and its error band considerably in the time interval 800 to 1100 AD. This calibration process also provides probability density distributions for each included structure, which allows for posterior dating and refines temporal errors considerably. Because such dating includes archaeological information it is not an independent age estimate but is a combination of all available dating methods. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). 1. Introduction “normal” Early Medieval settlements played a minor role. They seemed to have little potential for precise dating. The artefacts in these settle- The Early Medieval period in Central Europe is sparsely represented ment sites, mostly ceramics, were regarded as chronologically insensi- by historical documents and additionally it has a low number of exten- tive and were most commonly dated only to the 9th century or even sively investigated, published archaeological sites, especially in eastern up the 11th century (Friesinger, 1965a, 1965b, 1974). Austria. Accordingly, refined archaeological dating of Early Medieval In the last few decades the situation has changed, though slowly. finds and other material especially in eastern Austria and parts of its More and more settlements have been entirely or partly investigated adjacent regions is still a major problem of the “Slavic archaeology”. (Wawruschka, 1999), often as part of large scale rescue excavations. Indeed, research since the early second half of the 19th century has Although not all of these studies are published (i. e. Kühtreiber et al., traditionally focused on the archaeology of graveyards. Here scientists 2008), they are the first step towards a broader understanding of mate- found materials where dating seemed to be possible, due to the fact rial culture, which will provide the possibility for comparison, and in that the graves yielded grave goods, which could be easily compared turn develop a better understanding of Early Medieval settlement activ- with other regions and sites. In comparison, the investigations of ities, especially in north-eastern Austria (see for example Nowotny, 2014). Nevertheless, dating can be difficult through analogy to other sites. This problem is further aggravated by the limited use of radiocar- ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: +43 3842 402 2643; fax: +43 3842 402 2642. bon dating on such sites, since the calibration curve is characterised by E-mail addresses: [email protected] (E. Schnepp), three plateaus in the time interval between 650 and 950 AD (Reimer [email protected] (M. Obenaus), [email protected] (P. Lanos). 1 Now at: SILVA NORTICA Archäologische Dienstleistungen OG, Schimmelsprung, 51, et al., 2004). Hence, radiocarbon dating is very imprecise in this time 3571 Thunau am Kamp, Austria. interval. In comparison, the archaeomagnetic calibration curve for http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2014.12.002 2352-409X/© 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). E. Schnepp et al. / Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 2 (2015) 688–698 689 Austria shows a strong movement of the geomagnetic field direction trench was continuously infilled and compacted with “municipal from 500 to 1000 AD (Schnepp and Lanos, 2006). Unfortunately, due waste” dating to the 10th century. The majority of ovens may have to the limited dataset the error envelope is large and accordingly the been used for bread production. In addition to these ovens some oval calibration curve also produces relatively large errors in calendar dates or round hearths or fireplaces were also found, either outside or on when used for archaeomagnetic dating of this time period. the floor of the houses. Furthermore a few other pyrotechnic features The archaeological site of Thunau am Kamp is situated in the middle such as a pottery kiln have been found (Obenaus et al., 2005; Kamp-region in the north-western part of Lower Austria (Waldviertel, Obenaus, 2011). However, evidence for metal processing is only indi- 48.59°N, 15.65°E). This central settlement agglomeration has been rectly documented by the discovery of fragments of furnace wall cov- known since the second half of the 19th century. It consists of two ered with slag and by tuyeres. main parts — the hillfort on the ‘Schanzberg’ and a settlement in the The settlement in the valley had the function of a productive area, valley near Kamp River. Since 1965 excavations have mainly taken which supplied in cooperation with the hinterland the whole centre place in the hillfort. Occupation of the site started in the Late Neolithic to the east and north of it. According to the archaeological investigation period and later phases have been identified in the periods of Urnfield, of potsherds and other finds the settlement in the valley lasted from the Hallstatt, Late Iron Age, Late Roman, and finally Early Medieval the 9th century up to the beginning of the 11th century AD. time period, which was predominately investigated (Friesinger and In 2009 14 of the fired structures were sampled for an archaeo- Friesinger, 1991). New excavations started in the valley in 2004, in an magnetic investigation. These structures could be dated in two ways: area situated in a basin developed from a former meander bend of on the one hand by using the existing curve (Schnepp and Lanos, the River Kamp. Its ancient erosion bank is formed by two hills: 2006) taking into account stratigraphic constraints and some evidences “Schanzberg” in the north and “Goldberg” in the west. According to for contemporaneity; or on the other hand, by constructing a new curve, the excavations the area can be divided into three parts, each with which would incorporate the data provided by the 14 new structures different functions: a large graveyard from the 9th and 10th centuries with some a priori dating information. Bayesian modelling as part of is situated on the steeper slopes of “Goldberg” and has been known the new curve construction process could then provide both posterior about since 1872. Then, in the south a settlement area is situated on a curves and posterior dating for each structure. The purpose of this flatter alluvial terrace. The third area has an “industrial” character, paper is to compare the dating results from using both these approaches. lying close to the banks of the River Kamp. The high density of houses also used for habitation purposes suggests that the settlement area 2. Archaeological dating was one of the outer baileys of the administration centre of the hillfort.
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