Die Keramikfunde der Grabung Feddersen Wierde (1. jh. v. bis
5. jh. n. chr.),, By P. Schmid
Probleme der Küstenforschung im südlichen Nordseegebiet,
Band 29; Feddersen Wierde, Band 5. Oldenburg, Isensee Verlag 2006. 192 pp, 92plates,
5 figures. ISBN 3-89995-355-X. (€ 45)
Die Buntmetallfunde der Grabung Feddersen Wierde: Chronologie
– Chorologie – Technologie, By J. Schuster
Probleme der Küstenforschung im südlichen Nordseegebiet,
Band 30; Feddersen Wierde, Band 6. Oldenburg, Isensee Verlag 2006. 278 pp, 31 plates,
69 figures, 24 tables. ISBN 978-3-89995-391-6. (€ 45)
As one who is trying to publish excavations from the 1950s, in my case the rescue
excavations in Winchester, there are problems in how much it is worth spending time
and money on excavations which do not reach modern standards of recording and data
collection. There are iconic sites (which include both Winchester and Feddersen
Wierde) which need extensive treatment, and the plans of the various successive
phases with the radiating succession of long houses at Feddersen Wierde with their
domestic and stable areas has become a classic of European prehistory. This terp
started as a flat settlement in the 1st century BC, and was gradually raised in
height to protect it from the increasingly injurious inundations of the North Sea,
until its abandonment in the 5th century AD by which time it had reached some 4m
in height; it was re-occupied in the early medieval period in the 8th-9th century,
and has some later activity. This represented the first extensive excavation of
such a site (about 3.5ha), between the years 1955 and 1963.
The basic problem with Feddersen Wierde, however, is that it was appallingly excavated
even by the standards of the day; at least in Winchester, from most of the sites
excavated between 1953 and 1960, the majority of the finds can be assigned to stratified
layers, and related directly to some of the structures identified; this is not the
case with the German site. It was excavated using the planum method, that
is it was dug in spits of 20–30cm depth (spits A to L), and all the finds collected
in 5m squares. Ideally, with this method, at each stage the site is planned, and
when the next spit is removed, finds from separate features are distinguished, producing
at least some stratified finds; this was not the case at Feddersen Wierde, and the
only information we seem to have for the majority of finds is the location by spit
and 5m square. The phasing of the site was done after the excavation, using the
spit plans and relating these to the drawn sections (implying that features were
perfectly visible, just ignored in the digging), and this is the basis of the phase
plans (Siedlungshorizonten 1a to 1d for the flat settlement, and 2 to 8
for the terp proper). Some finds were measured in (eg, coins and brooches),
but this was not done systematically, either for all finds of a special nature (eg,
only 13 of the 34 coins), or by using a standard method (absolute height, depth
below the bottom of the previous spit, etc.). From the photographs in Band 6 it
would seem that some features were identified and excavated, but this finds absolutely
no resonance in Band 5 where not a single closed group of finds is published. One
can only conclude that of the thousands of sherds found on the site, not a single
one can be called ‘stratified’ and the same is true for all but a very small number
of the special finds, such as some brooches from a burial. It is impossible to distinguish
between finds which were finally deposited in the dumped material used to raise
the height of the terp, and those which were related directly to the occupation
layers.
The pottery, Band 5, suffers from a second fatal flaw, in that it is caught in the
paradigm shift that started taking place in the 1960s, and so its presentation does
little to deal with the sorts of questions we might want to ask nowadays. The study
of the ceramics is completely in the ‘Culture-Historical’ approach dominant in the
1950s, and no effort has been made to extend the scope of the study. Thus, there
is no interest in matters such as production and function of the pottery; only once
is a fabric described, of Streepband pottery (p. 26), and only once function,
of a group of storage jars (p. 54). The major concern is the shape of the pot, and
its cultural relationship with adjacent cultural groups such as the ‘Elbe-Weser
Culture’, and, in a very secondary way, the decoration. There is no discussion of
who was making pottery, where it was made, nor phenomena such as trade and production.
There is no internal dating on the site, despite some dendrochronology dates and
imported Roman finds, so all of the dating of the pottery (and other finds) depends
on similar finds turning up in dated contexts elsewhere. Perhaps the problem is
that, in the prehistoric and early historic times, there are few cases where cultural
change can be linked historically with migration of populations, and two of those
are to be found in northwest Germany, at the beginning and at the end of the occupation
of the site: the expansion of the ‘Elbe-Weser Culture’ into central Europe in the
late 1st century BC, associated with the appearance in Bohemia of the Marcomanni;
and, in the 5th century AD, the Anglo-Saxon settlement of eastern Europe (Feddersen
Wierde provides some good parallels to English pottery). But this should not prevent
discussion of other aspects on which the pottery might throw light. Noting the parallels
for, for instance, early Saxon pottery from England, is perhaps the only way in
which the publication can be used; the distribution maps of the pottery on the site
which are claimed to give some indication of date, along with quantitative recording
of the percentage of types, in fact do no such thing.
In contrast, Schuster tries to maximise the possibilities of the data he is investigating,
mainly the bronze and silver objects, though also a few iron objects which had previously
been unpublished. Using work done for his doctoral thesis, he cites a wide spectrum
of literature or reports from the areas of Germany and northern Europe which escaped
Roman control, but also adjacent areas of the Roman Empire in northern Gaul and
along the Rhine, seeking parallels and dating evidence for the material. As such
it is a useful compendium of information on specific artefact types. He also publishes
the evidence for bronze working on the site, both in the form of crucibles and evidence
of repaired objects, and speculates that the introduction of metalworking came from
smiths from the local area, and not people with experience of Roman practices. He
does his best to locate the objects in their settlement context, but, for the reasons
discussed above, this is only successful to a limited extent. He also tries to date
the various phases of settlement, using a few dendrochronology dates (the earliest
is 56 BC), imported Roman objects, and the evidence of the local pottery and especially
his own studies of the brooches. He inevitably has to pass judgement on which objects
may belong to which phase, and ignore the many earlier items which may have been
redeposited, and the later objects which are contamination due to the failure of
isolating finds from later disturbances. He comes out with a chronology for the
site, but it must be emphasised that this is the best guess, and relies entirely
on the dating of the objects from outside Feddersen Wierde; there is absolutely
no internal chronology due to the lack of stratified finds which can be linked directly
with the settlement phases, as even the items which are measured in usually cannot
be assigned to a specific phase with any confidence.
With these two volumes, we can now draw a line under the publication of this site.
The finds such as the pottery, will be of some use when people start looking at
trade and production, but only a limited way (their presence on the site as unstratified
finds, but not with any dating evidence). It is over 40 years since Egon Gersbach
introduced stratigraphical excavation on the Heuneburg, but it is amazing that there
is still a debate in Germany on whether to dig stratigraphically or in spits. There
are contexts in which the planum method is necessary – I have used it myself
on the terres noires of the Auvergne where layers are simply invisible,
but with much tighter control (using a one-metre grid, and using the stratigraphy
where it was visible), but there are still major conflicts in cities such as Köln
where the traditionalists have suppressed all attempts by other excavators to introduce
modern methods. I hope this damning review of a site whose potential was never reached
because of poor excavation methodology will encourage those fighting for change.
John Collis
Review Submitted: February 2008
The views expressed in this review are not necessarily those
of the Society or the Reviews Editor.
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