The development of settlement patterns and the cultural landscape in the environs of the Heuneburg during the Hallstatt and Early Latène periods

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For many decades the Heuneburg has enjoyed a key role in national and international research on the Iron Age. The excavations on the high plateau financed by the DFG in the 1950s to 1970s and the work carried out in the area of the lower town and the outer settlement in the years 2004 to 2010 not only deepened our understanding of the Heuneburg itself and the "princely seats", but also contributed significantly to the design of research into the cultural background and processes of the Hallstatt period.The investigations and the often surprising new discoveries of recent years (e.g. stone gate, wooden bridge, outer settlement, Alte Burg, Hallstatt period road, tomb of a girl and wooden chamber grave at Bettelbühl) all bear imposing witness to just how much we can still learn from the Heuneburg, as well as to its enormous research potential for a long-term project: Almost no research has been conducted on the further environment of the Heuneburg and the question of the economic, social and ritual relationships and the transport routes between the central place and the surrounding area. One of the main aims of the long-term project is therefore the investigation of the development of regional rural settlement structures (open farmsteads, hamlets) during the Hallstatt and Early Latène periods. In order to achieve this, systematic field walking, large-scale geophysical prospection and targeted excavations of rural settlements in two transects that cover different natural environments will be carried out. Nor has any research been carried out on the relationships of the other hillforts, both with their own subregional surroundings and with the Heuneburg itself. The surveys and excavations that are planned to this end as part of the long-term project will provide the necessary basis for the dating of the hillforts sites, as well as for an understanding of their development and their function. Priority in this will be placed on testing the hypothesis of a hierarchical centralisation. For the first time the development of the region in the Early Latène period is to be researched, that is in the period immediately after the abandonment of the Heuneburg. Recent discoveries suggest that the monumental fortifications and the massive tumuli continued to be a lasting factor that shaped the ritual landscape well into the Early and Middle Latène periods. Finally, as regards research on the extensive outer settlement, there is still an urgent need for further work, for it is only through systematic investigation of the particularly well preserved areas that reliable conclusions can be drawn about its internal structure and about the chronological arrangement of the structural elements.