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100 Chapter Six Eventful Archaeology, the Heuneburg Mudbrick Wall, and the Early Iron Age of Southwest Germany Bettina Arnold Abstract The Period IV Heuneburg mudbrick wall, constructed sometime around 600 BC and destroyed by fire some 60 years later, clearly represents a break with the indigenous fortification systems that preceded and succeeded it. Other evidence for Mediterranean contact and influence, particularly in the form of imported pottery, is minimal until after the razing of the mudbrick wall Heuneburg and its associated outer settlement around 540 BC. This suggests that the impact of the initial event represented by the physical alteration of the environment in the form of the mudbrick wall extended to structural transformations within the society over the next two generations. An analysis of the late Hallstatt Heuneburg mortuary landscape from the “eventful archaeology” perspective is particularly appropriate in this case because the transformation of the built environment appears to have preceded and naturalized the social transformations that were to follow. The eventual leveling of the mudbrick wall takes on added significance in view of the fact that by the time of this iconoclastic action, the social rupture and rearticulation wrought by contact with distant power centers were already irreversible. This rearticulation can be seen in the construction of a massive wall and ditch system surrounding the hillfort after 540 BC as well as in the erection of four monumental burial mounds on the remains of the outer settlement, one of which contained four secondary burials with gold neckrings, ordinarily only found in paramount central chamber graves. Traditional archaeological interpretations of the mudbrick wall will be presented in light of the eventful archaeology paradigm, taking into consideration recent evidence from the mortuary and settlement record associated with this early Iron Age hillfort in southwest Germany. Eventful Archaeology, the Heuneburg Mudbrick Wall 101 Transitions Define Traditions In a pioneering article on the individual in prehistory, Karl Narr had the following to say about the “mad builder” of the Heuneburg and his mudbrick wall masterpiece: A construction that certainly would have been quite revolutionary for its time and place…retains the features of a very dominant personality—a powerful ruler of the citadel, with wide-ranging contacts, open to innovation as long as it could serve as a vehicle for his need for display and the external demonstration of power and wealth.…Here we are face to face—if only in shadowy form—with the lineaments of a personality for whose evaluation as an individual it is relatively immaterial whether or not we can determine in which burial mound he was interred, or which corpse we can assign him to. That takes nothing away from our sense that we are in the presence of a historical personality. (1972:256) In general, the archaeological record presents itself as a cumulative concatenation of actions, most of which, in the manner of palimpsests, have partly or completely obliterated earlier patterns of behavior. Occasionally, however, a window, or at least an aperture, opens in the mostly undifferentiated mélange of human detritus that constitutes the archaeological record, and a ray of light breaks through to cast some part of the natural or human landscape of the past in high relief. One such momentary illumination occurred around 600 bc at the Heuneburg hillfort, a modest fortified spur of land overlooking the Danube River in the part of the German state of Baden-Württemberg known as Swabia. Several factors make this particular case study an ideal opportunity to test as well as critique the eventful archaeology paradigm. The Iron Age occupation of the site was relatively short, with major shifts and transformations taking place over a period of 200 plus or minus 20 years. However, by the time the hillfort was abandoned between 450 and 400 bc, the cultural and social structures that had characterized this region since the Bronze Age had been permanently reconfigured, a process that began with the erection of a wholly alien form of fortification system on the plateau that subsisted for at least two generations. Around 600 bc, a person or persons unknown initiated and presumably supervised the construction of a perimeter wall on the plateau made of air-dried mudbrick on a stone foundation, a unique phenomenon in west-central Iron Age Europe. To paraphrase Sewell, the mudbrick wall at the Heuneburg represents a built manifestation of an event that transformed the social and cultural structure of the community (2005:199), and the...

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