Bronze Age Jewelry and Prehistoric Settlements Discovered in Germany

Ahlum hoard (1500–1300 BC): enactment of finds, cervix collar and fragments, amber beads, curl spiral, needle fragments and fragments of an limb spiral. Credit: C. Wehrstedt, NLD

Construction workers gathering a upwind workplace successful Lower Saxony person uncovered a uncommon postulation of Bronze Age jewelry alongside grounds of prehistoric settlements successful Germany dating backmost much than 3,000 years.

The find came adjacent Wolfenbüttel, wherever archaeologists examined astir 93,000 quadrate meters (about 23 acres) of onshore betwixt August 2024 and September 2025.

The Bronze Age jewelry belonged to astatine slightest 3 women. The postulation includes decorated cervix collars, limb spirals, expanse metallic ornaments, and astatine slightest 2 disc pins, each dated to betwixt 1500 and 1300 BC.

The astir striking portion is simply a necklace strung with much than 156 amber beads. It is the largest azygous Bronze Age amber find ever recorded successful Lower Saxony.

Rare Bronze Age jewelry surfaces beneath upwind workplace site

The artifacts came to airy during instauration enactment for 1 of 19 upwind turbines being built by SAB WindTeam GmbH. At the archetypal walk of the excavator, workers spotted bronze and amber objects clustered intimately together.

Specialists from the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation stepped successful immediately, lifting the fragile pieces on with the surrounding ungraded for cautious extraction nether laboratory conditions.

Bone comb from the 4th/5th period with bronze rivets. Credit: T. Uhlig, NLD

Researchers judge the treasure was a deliberate deposit made by the section elite, apt for spiritual reasons.

A 2025 survey from the University of Aarhus recovered that amber held a cardinal relation successful a long-distance commercialized web during the aboriginal and mediate Bronze Age, connecting confederate Scandinavia to Assur. That discourse adds value to the amber necklace’s significance.

Jewelry points to prehistoric settlements successful Germany

The excavation besides revealed layers of quality enactment spanning thousands of years. In the confederate conception of the site, archaeologists uncovered 2 well-preserved location level plans belonging to the Linear Pottery Culture, the earliest farming civilization successful Lower Saxony.

These structures connection caller clues astir the region’s archetypal known settlements from astir the mid-6th millennium BC.

From aboriginal centuries, respective pits held what look to beryllium intentionally arranged groupings of buried dogs, Roman-style pottery, and metallic objects.

Roman-era pits and an past comb adhd to the story

Researchers besides recovered a astir implicit three-layer comb from the 4th oregon 5th period AD with circular oculus decoration and bronze rivets. Such combs were idiosyncratic items typically placed connected ceremonial pyres and astir ne'er past successful 1 piece.

This is the archetypal Bronze Age hoard recovered successful the bluish Harz foreland portion of Lower Saxony since 1967 and the lone 1 excavated utilizing modern technological methods.

Researchers from TU Clausthal are present readying worldly analyses. Conservation and survey of the objects are conscionable getting underway.