Lauchheim. Documentation, analysis and publication of the features and finds from the most important early medieval cemetery in South-West Germany

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The nearly complete excavation of the early medieval cemetery at Lauchheim Wasserfurche, Ostalbkreis, produced a lot of high-quality objects and organic material as well as a multitude of anthropological, botanical, dendrochronological and zoological data. More than 300 complex features could be conserved in their original context by lifting them in soil blocks. The nearby early medieval settlement was also extensively excavated. For that reasons the Lauchheim site is of major interest for the archaeological research of this period in southwestern Germany. The project, which is funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) since 2009, aims for an accelerated publication of the burial site possible by the application of more efficient methods and innovative techniques. A central role plays the 3D x-ray computed tomography, which was tested during a DFG funded pilot project and is now used as a standard method for the quick, reliable, digital and threedimensional documentation of objects recovered in soil blocks. In terms of time and the analytical and financial aspects this method is a convincing improvement compared to the conventional cleaning by conservators.The analysis of the Lauchheim cemetery will allow substantial palaeodemographic and social historical interpretations. Moreover, it offers the rare possibility to compare burial site and settlement. With the systematic analysis of the well preserved organic material the excavation also provides good conditions for the research on archaeological textiles. For this purpose the extensive finds of the burial site are all digitally documented and are fed into a specially developed data base. This allows interrogating differentiated information during the analysis. Later on the database can be used to compile the catalogue for the publication. To ensure archiving of the large amount of digital data a special concept has been developed. The database could also serve as a basis for an online publication, which should enable the scientific community to control the results and to carry out own analysis.