The new princess from Bettelbühl

But why was the Old Castle so big? Why the elongated oval? Again, the comparisons go to the Mediterranean region. In Etruria and Greece, horse racing tracks were established at that time, where people measured their strength against each other in honor of the gods. Written and pictorial traditions tell of this. The oldest report can be found in the »Iliad«: Achilles organized a chariot race in honor of his friend Patroclus, who had fallen in battle. There was also a hippodrome in Olympia, two “stadiums”, i.e. about 384.5 meters long, which does not go badly with the 340 meters of the Old Castle. However, only a few such sites have been found archaeologically so far, and they are all much younger. So is the oldest ruin of a chariot racing track on the southern edge of the Swabian Jura of all places?

A chariot racetrack north of the Alps?

At this time, horse-drawn chariots played a major role among the Celtic elite. This is revealed by the remains of the wagon in graves. At the foot of the bus, a figurine came to light that shows a rider. It was probably once attached to a yoke or the drawbar. In Iron Age graves in the Alpine region, ceremonial vessels called situlae were used to burn corpses, and their pictorial decoration often shows representations of chariots. But the fact that the powerful of the Heuneburg built a hippodrome on a mountain spur near the Danube seemed too far-fetched, even to the state archaeologists.

So, with their spades, they followed a ridge of rock dividing the plateau. “We really hoped that it would go all the way to the edge,” says Krausse. But instead it ended far in front of it and thus divided the oval along its longitudinal axis, analogous to the »Spina« in the Circus Maximus in Rome. “We held a symposium on the Old Castle in 2020, also to find alternative interpretations.” But even the unusual location on a mountain spur offered no counterargument, because it has been proven that a road wide enough for cars led up to the plateau at the time.

“In recent years, Celtologists have often found evidence that attempts were made to stop the decay of high-ranking figures by embalming.”(Dirk Krausse)

Perhaps the new grave from the Bettelbühl necropolis with its remains of a wooden wagon will help. However, the hope that it is as pristine as that of the Princess has already been dashed. “In the meantime we’ve almost reached the floor of the chamber in some places, where there’s a jumble of bones and grave goods,” says the head of the excavation. “So someone invaded long ago and showed little reverence in search of treasure.”

Nevertheless, one can still expect a lot of knowledge, not only about the horse-drawn carriage cult. For example, a thick lump of pine resin was found in the area of ​​the upper body. “In recent years, Celtologists have often found evidence that attempts were made to stop high-ranking people from decomposing by embalming,” says Krausse. A woman was probably also buried here, as amber brooches and filigree gold beads speak for, while there were no weapons or snake brooches typical of men. But in which time does this dead person belong? Was the mudbrick wall still standing then?

The Heuneburg descends

Around 530/520 BC It was destroyed by fire and not rebuilt in this form. After that, they holed up behind a more traditional wall of stone and earth. In general, everything somehow became more normal: the wealthy moved to the Acropolis, the craftsmen to the outer bailey, the huge outer settlement fell largely fallow. The “Etruscan” large building was demolished and a new necropolis was built on its site.

Where did all the people go? Did they try their luck in the new centers of power like the Glauberg in Hesse? The new beginning was probably the beginning of the end anyway. The Heuneburg lost its radiance, was built around 450 BC. even left. The Celtologists suspect: New trade routes had been established, which made the route via the upper reaches of the Danube uninteresting.

The fact that this development did not happen without blood and tears is proven by skeletal remains on the east terrace between the Burgberg and the Danube, which has not yet been explored much. A good 180 pieces of bone and tooth were uncovered there in 2012, which came from six to seven people, including three to four women, a probably male youth and one or two children. The skeleton of a 25 to 30-year-old woman proves that none of them belonged to the upper class: her lumbar vertebrae were already worn down, she had lost five teeth, suffered from tooth decay, periodontal disease and a root abscess, her paranasal sinuses were inflamed. All this speaks to a life of hard work, poor diet and damp and cold living conditions. Even death did not give these people back their dignity: bite marks indicate that their corpses had been eaten by animals and had been taken away in parts.

Is it human sacrifice? This practice was not alien to the Celts, as evidenced by traditions and archaeological finds from France. »There is no evidence of this«, contradicts the prehistorian, »it had nothing to do with a ritual execution.« The fact that at least 4 of the more than 30 arrowheads discovered in the castle area were dug up in the context of these skeletons is more indicative of an act of war . This cannot be proven either, because if these arrows were deadly, they did not hit any of the surviving bones. »Personally, I think they were peasants, simple people from the surrounding area who got caught between the fronts during a siege. But the East Terrace is still on the agenda anyway.«

White spots on the map

The same applies to the »Große Heuneburg«, twelve kilometers away, whose outer bailey also covered 1.5 hectares, but whose main bailey was significantly larger at 5 hectares. It is probably older and lost its rank to the Danube settlement. We don’t know exactly yet, there is still a lot of excavation work to be done. And if you consider all the smaller castles, hamlets and burial grounds that have already been discovered and partially explored, the settlement network around the Heuneburg grows to a conservative estimate of 400 square kilometers; their influence probably extended much further. Within this area, people benefited from a central authority that ensured security.

So the Heuneburg will probably remain a jigsaw puzzle of human history for a long time to come in a place where nobody would have guessed. If a small village in Latium hadn’t set out to conquer the world and bring Roman culture to “barbarian” tribes, who knows, perhaps a Celtic poet would have turned the songs and legends of his culture into a monumental epic about the Heuneburg. It would be about Windswept Pyrene, or whatever its inhabitants called it. From shining towers, from which the view went far over the country to the burial mounds of the ancestors. That Celtic Homer would have sung of dangerous chariot races, in which the best competed against each other in honor of the gods. Of beautiful princesses, heroes and a long, long war.