House urns
The burial of the cremated remains selected from the funeral pyre in an urn reveals different procedures. Throughout the ages, rich ornamentation as well as simple undecorated vessels have been found. The house and face urns in the northern Harz region are a regional speciality. In some burial grounds, such an elaborately designed vessel can sometimes be found among dozens of urns. Other centres of distribution are known from present-day Denmark and western Italy. Direct contacts between these regions can be assumed. They illustrate long-range relationships and the cultural adoption of objects and rites from distant regions.
Tochheim, Salzlandkreis; Kiekindermark, Kr. Parchim / Early Pre-Roman Iron Age 8th/7th century B.C.
Urn with cremation
In the later Bronze Age from 1100 BC onwards, a fundamental change in burial customs began. In Lower Saxony, with a few exceptions, cremation was used for almost 2000 years until the introduction of Christianity. In the early phase of research, mostly only the undamaged urns were kept and the cremated remains were poured back into the grave pits or no further attention was paid to them. Today, the burnt bones can provide information on gender, age, workload and possible diseases that affected the bones.
Surroundings of Hanover / Late Roman Imperial Period, Early Bird Migration Period
Objects of Bronze Age trade and monetary economy
The prehistoric population groups were divided into so-called "cultural groups" of varying regional extent. The finds provide evidence of a variety of contacts and influences. One important aspect is the exchange of raw materials, which contributed to a significant strengthening of supra-regional relations, especially in the Bronze Age. Eye-ring and bar ingots as well as sickles show the beginnings of a supra-regional value system, which was complemented regionally by scales and weights. The supply of copper and tin followed widely extended transfer routes.
Surroundings of Hannover; unknown and Bösel near Lüchow, district of Lüchow-Dannenberg / Early and Late Bronze Age
Animal teeth and animal figurines from horses, cattle, pigs, sheep and goats
The animal population of a prehistoric farm can be determined from the slaughter and food remains as well as from the animal teeth. The composition of cattle, pigs, sheep and goats depends on the natural environment. Horses and dogs complete the species spectrum. The teeth can be used to determine the age at slaughter or the age reached. Harnessing of cattle, horses and goats can also be documented. The strontium isotope method can also be used to obtain information on the origin, regional breeding or large-scale mobility of certain animals.
Watenstedt, district of Helmstedt Animal figurines: Toy trade / Bronze Age and Iron Age
Teaching Collection for Pre- and Protohistory: Collection and Archaeological Originals
The find material illustrates various aspects of food, trade and extensive interpersonal exchange for the different periods from the Neolithic to the Migration Period. On the one hand, it is the objects themselves that can be integrated into European connections. For example, there are objects in the Bronze Age that were made hundreds of kilometres away and found their way into the ground elsewhere. Then there are objects whose design can only be explained by contact with people from other regions, such as the house urns, which show a conspicuous accumulation especially in northern Italy (Etruria).
The various objects then contain further information that can be determined with the help of the various natural sciences. The origin of copper and tin from the various deposits on the basis of the metal composition; the origin of people and animals from neighbouring or distant regions on the basis of the local rock formations ingested with the food and drinking water; the nutritional basis, body size and workload of prehistoric people with corresponding bone examinations on the surviving skeletal remains. The collections can thus be consulted again and again for modern questions with their original substance, and with their copies they provide vivid evidence of the extensive cultural contacts in European prehistory.
