In the Upper Bavarian district of Eichstätt, archaeologists have uncovered the foundation of a Roman burial mound. It consists of a carefully built stone circle twelve meters in diameter with a square extension. Such a tumulus is very unusual and rare for this region – the former Roman province of Raetia. Missing skeletons and grave goods also suggest that this monumental tomb was a cenotaph – a false grave.
The Upper Bavarian town of Wolkertshofen is located in an area that has been inhabited for thousands of years. Archaeologists have already found many traces of settlements and burials there from the Neolithic Age, the Bronze and Iron Ages, the Roman Empire and the early Middle Ages. In ancient times, this place belonged to the Roman province of Raetia, which stretched from the southeastern Black Forest across the foothills of the Alps to South Tyrol. At that time, the northern border was marked by the Danube and the Rhaetian Limes, which was built between the Upper Rhine and the Danube. Because of this far-reaching settlement history, new building projects in the Eichstätt district usually take place with the participation of archaeologists.
A Roman tumulus in Raetia
This is also the case this time: In the run-up to the construction work for a new rain retention basin in the northeast of Wolkertshofen, researchers from the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation and an archeology office came across archaeological relics. In addition to prehistoric settlement traces and ceramic fragments, the remains of a massive stone structure also came to light: the archaeologists discovered a round circle carefully made of stone with an outer diameter of around twelve meters. On the south side there is a square extension measuring two by two meters, which probably once served as the foundation for a stele or statue, as the state office reports.
The shape and the careful combination of the stones indicate that it is a Roman burial mound (tumulus). Such tumuli have a long tradition in Central Europe and Italy. They appeared in the northwestern provinces of the Roman Empire from the 1st century AD. However, such tumuli have so far only been found very rarely in the Roman province of Raetia, where the site was once located. Although some Roman burial sites are known from the Augsburg area, tumuli with stone curtain walls and of this size are hardly documented in the former Raetia. “We didn’t expect to discover a grave monument of this time and size here,” says Mathias Pfeil, general curator of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation.
Tumulus was a mock grave
The archaeologists assume that the newly discovered tumulus was a mock grave, a so-called cenotaph. Neither skeletons nor grave goods were found inside the stone circle. In Roman times, such mock graves served as a symbolic tomb to commemorate a person whose bones could not be recovered or who was buried elsewhere. A cenotaph was often a place of remembrance and an expression of social status at the same time. This interpretation of the find is supported by its location: the tumulus was located directly on an important Roman traffic axis, a Roman road that led via the nearby Nassenfels into the Altmühltal, as the archaeologists explain. The remains of a “Villa Rustica” – a Roman country estate – were also discovered in the immediate vicinity of the tumulus and the Roman road. The family living there apparently wanted to make a visible statement to someone who had died.
The newly discovered tumulus is also interesting because of a special feature of this region, as the team explains. The people in Roman Raetia not only used newly built tumuli as graves and monuments, they also “recycled” older burial mounds from the Bronze and Iron Ages. Whether this was a conscious reference to pre-Roman, Celtic burial customs or whether it was purely for practical reasons is still being debated. In this context, the Roman grave in Wolkertshofen is of particular importance for further research into the life of the Romans in Bavaria, according to the State Office for Monument Preservation.
Source: Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation