Interpretation späteisenzeitlicher und frühkaiserzeitlicher Siedlungsspuren auf der Amöneburg, Ldkr. Marburg-Biedenkopf

The volcanic cone of the Amöneburg some 20 km east of Marburg above the River Ohm, a left tributary of the Lahn, was occupied in the Neolithic, the Bronze Age, the Early and Late pre-Roman and the Roman Iron Age, the Early to High Middle Ages, and Early Modern times. Its special situation, its belonging to the northern contact fringe of the Celtic world with intensive long-distance cultural contacts, small neighbouring settlements, and wealth of excavation and stray finds attest its supra-regional importance in the Latène Period, although an earlier interpretation of older excavation features as 20 hill slope houses is obsolete. What is ascertained, however, are at least 6 terraces on its south-eastern slope with at least 43 m in length, a maximum of 0.5 m in height, and at least 6 m in width. These had been levelled with loam, stones, and vegetal mats, and the presence of ash layers, cremation remains, and small finds were rather owed to its use as a ritual site or a cemetery than to a conflagration. Some supposedly closed pottery assemblages turned out far more complex with a duration from Lt B2 to D2 so that the Amöneburg, which was probably also fortified, even outlasted the Dünsberg oppidum.