Iron Age finds from the valley of Egå

Abstract

Iron Age finds from the valley of Egå

For a long time it has been known that the Lisbjerg area North of Århus has many graves from the Late Pre-Roman and Early Roman Iron Age -in other words: the time from c. 50BC until c. 200 AD. lnhumation graves from the Early Roman Iron Age are particularly conspicuous, both because of their form and their content. Because of the quite large number of clay vessels which are usually found in each grave, this grave type became known at an early date as "East Jutland Pottery Graves".

About the beginning of the 20th century the National Museum keeper Carl Neergaard undertook excavations on several hundred graves in this area. The best known site was the Bulbjerg burial ground. At that time it was more difficult to find the settlements to which the burial grounds belonged. However, some were found but they were only investigated to a very limited degree. The reason for this was that economically justifiable methods for the uncovering of vast settlement areas from Prehistoric periods were not developed until the 1960s.

Since the 1970s Forhistorisk Museum Moesgård has participated in the hunt for Iron Age settlements and, since the beginning of the 1990s, the location and excavation of these settlements has speeded up.

There are several reasons for this intense archaeological activity. In particular, the municipalities of Århus and Hinnerup wanted to prepare large areas for sale for industrial development along the valley of Egå, by which Lisbjerg is situated.

The Egå valley is a wide sub-glacial stream trench in the characteristically undulating landscape of Eastern Jutland. The sides of the valley are quite steep in some places but at others they fall evenly towards the bottom of the valley from both North and South. The water of the Egå runs through the valley into the meadows at Lystrup and from there flows into the Bay of Århus.

The soil on the hillsides and on the hills above the valley is amongst the best in Jutland. The valley itself offered meadows, fresh water and fields for animals and crops.

In this article an attempt is made to prove a relationship between the burial grounds and the settlements that are now known from the Early Iron Age. The settlements are either completely excavated, or established through trial excavations, located through reconnaissance of the topsoil. The burial grounds have all been completely or partly excavated. All the sites mentioned are West of Lystrup Enge ('enge' means 'meadows') and the upper part of the Egå valley.

South of the Egå, near Skejby Hospital, there is a settlement system consisting of two villages, one succeeding the other. Only one of them has been excavated, the Sommerlyst I site, whereas trial trenches were made at the other site. Sommerlyst I consisted of 16 long­houses. They were not all contemporary but it was possible to observe how the individual house had been rebuilt, added to, made smaller and removed. It seems as if the individual houses were kept within a strict "lot" system. The village had a burial ground with 17 graves attached to it. Two of the graves were different from the rest in terms of size and grave goods. Details relating to the form of the graves and their contents illustrate the wide variations in the grave appearance of this period. The discovery of more grave sites is to be expected in spite of the density of the modern settlement (fig. 1-4).

A village was not the only settlement type found from the period in question. At Børglumvej a solitary farm consisting of a long-house and a smaller building was excavated. The most important contribution made by this site is that a macro fossil investigation was carried out, as well as pollen analyses from layers in a small boggy area immediately next to the farm. The analyses showed that the landscape was open and tree-less, chat different types of grain were grown, and that a variation of other planes and seeds were gathered. The boggy area, which was a pond at the time of the farm, was presumably kept clean (fig. 1).

The previously known burial grounds just to the North of Lisbjerg, by the farm of Rugård, as well as the burial grounds at and near the Bulbjergbanke to the East of Lisbjerg were probably related to two settlements. At the farm of Rugård two settlements (or rather, two phases of a moving village) have been located and it is possible to see how the grave sites were located around the village. A similar pattern must apply to Bulbjerg but here the village has not yet been found -or perhaps it disappeared during extraction of gravel. It has been demonstrated that even the very large Bulbjerg burial ground originally consisted of several smaller grave sites (fig. 5-6).

Further into the valley west of Lisbjerg a corresponding burial ground/village system has been established at the farms of Vestergård and Lisbjerggård (Klokhøje) (fig. 7). Similar associations were found in an area east of the small town of Søften as well as in an area west of Søften (fig. 8). In the eastern system the village called Damgården IV was excavated along with traces of various activities from a larger area, which must have originated from the Damgården IV village (fig. 9). In the same area a couple of smaller burial grounds in burial mounds and in stone burial cairns have been excavated, and it should be noted that several graves had previously been excavated in this area, (figs. 10-11). The system west of Søften consisted of a small village and -about 200 metres from this- a small burial ground with six inhumation graves (fig. 12).

So far eight settlement sites in the Egå valley have been described, one south and seven north of the river. Several types are represented. Solitary farms, as at Børglum and perhaps Lisbjerg Terp, large villages, such as Sommerlyst I and Damgården IV, small settlements, as at Søften Vestergård with only two or three farms and, finally, villages which have been located but not yet excavated. The settlement area of Skejby probably represents a moving village. The same may be the case of the Rugård and Lisbjerg II settlements. However, at Søften, the Damgården IV village stayed at the same spot for at least 200 years. In the Sommerlyst I village at Skejby the houses were at all times scattered. At Damgården IV this type of settlement existed during the first couple of phases but then the village was suddenly rearranged and, after this, the houses stayed within a strict "lot" system (fig. 9). In this village it was also possible to establish pit digging and other activities outside the village.

The mapping of the settlements shows chat at first the villages along the Northern side of the valley were situated with an interval of c. 1 km. However, it should be borne in mind that no settlement further to the north has been included in the investigation. The same distance can be expected on the southern side of the valley. Each village thus had a liberty of action of c. 1 square kilometre. Within -or rather at the outskirts of this area- solitary farms were sometimes established. A burial site was found at Lisbjerg Terp, but none at Børglumvej.

At Rugård/Lisbjerg II, Klokhøje and Hørkærgård/Damgården/Søften Vestergård, villages have been positively established, whilst a village must have been situated at Bulbjerg. In four of these cases a number of burial grounds were established around each village -some large, some small and some just consisting of a single grave. The burials were almost always placed at some distance from the settlement. This may be explained by a division of the land into intensively cultivated home fields and a common which was used for other purposes. To judge from the distance from the village, several of the burial grounds were placed on the border between the home fields and the common, but burials must also have been placed in the common. These are often single graves.

The location of the burial grounds was not chosen at random. It is no coincidence either that they were often of limited size, mostly consisting of less than 10 graves per site. We do not know how many people lived at each farm at any given time. But if we assume that at least a man and his wife and a number of children lived on each farm, the five farms of the Damgård IV village, for instance, probably housed at least 25 people. Add to this the previous generations and during a period of 200 years this would give quite a large burial ground, if the village buried their dead together. However, this was not the case. Not even at Bulbjerg were the first burials made at a common village burial ground. However, this might have been the case by the 2nd century AD. The many small burial grounds should rather be interpreted as being associated with each individual farm in the village. Such an interpretation helps to explain why the area contains so many grave sites.

The Late Pre-Roman and Early Roman Iron Age settlements in the Egå valley do not fit into any predefined settlement pattern. Local conditions decided how a village or farm came into existence and how it developed. But it has been possible to demonstrate a settlement-burial ground pattern, which was repeated at several places along the valley. This pattern is probably representative of the whole area.

Bjarne Henning Nielsen