Autumn is particularly exciting for a couple from Kottgeisering.
When the farmers have harvested their fields, things get interesting for both of them.
A couple from
Kottgeisering
have an exciting hobby in common: the bishops are experienced
field climbers
.
In the past three years,
hobby archaeologists
have gathered a box full of finds.
Everything from the region is available in the FFB newsletter.
Kottgeisering -
Autumn is always particularly exciting for the
amateur archaeologists
Dorlis and Roman Bischof.
Then the two experienced field
climbers set
off
from
Kottgeisering
and hope to find something that a person last held in their hands a few thousand years ago.
Kottgeisering: Hobby archaeologists out and about in the fields in the Fürstenfeldbruck district
The Bischofs are completely different from normal walkers: Instead of paved paths with a view of the alpine panorama, the field climbers - as the name suggests - cross-country, always have their eyes on the ground and their shoes are generally totally dirty.
"When the farmers have harvested and plowed their fields, as they are now, it becomes interesting for us," reports Dorlis Bischof.
Like recently on a field near
Eismerszell
(municipality of Moorenweis).
Look, don't dig or scratch - that's the motto of the couple from Kottgeisering
Look, don't dig or scratch is the
motto
- and a probe is certainly not used.
The landowner must also have been asked beforehand.
"If the ground is particularly hard, should the frost dissolve the chunks or a heavy rain hit it, then it washes away the
relics of
human settlement," explains her husband Roman.
A trained eye and, as with the bishops, 15 years of experience increase the chances of finding something.
The two are not so interested in artefacts from Roman times, they are focused on
prehistory and early history
and are therefore members of the working group of the same name in the Historisches Verein (HV) Fürstenfeldbruck.
So the older the better.
As far as the Middle Stone Age, the finds that have been unearthed in the district reach on the Eismerszeller Acker until the New Stone Age, around 5500 years before Christ.
Kottgeisering: Hobby archaeologists are focused on prehistory and early history
Various
flint stones
in flat form (plate silex) or radiolarite, a reddish sedimentary rock from this area, were the yield this time - but no ceramic shards.
Common finds from the district are
arrowheads
, stone axes, stone tools, scratches, drills, blades, and shards of ceramic containers such as pots, bowls and mugs.
“You shouldn't be fooled by colored
glass blocks
from the chewing gum machine, which probably came into the field over the farmer's dung heap,” says Roman Bischof.
On the other hand, a tiny bluish ring could be part of an antique pearl necklace that could have been made in the prehistoric glass workshop in Inning am Ammersee (district of Starnberg).
The couple from Kottgeisering categorized every archaeological find in a folder
The bishops meticulously
catalog
every find
in a folder, in monthly meetings (at least these took place before the corona pandemic) they exchange ideas with other experts from the
historical association
.
Of course, everything has to be submitted to the State Office for Monument Preservation, Department of Soil Monument Preservation, which feeds the data into the archaeological Bavaria Atlas.
As a rule, however, the find remains with the
finder
, if only because the office does not have that much space to store it.
More important finds, on the other hand, are exhibited in the Fürstenfeldbrucker Stadtmuseum or are loaned at home and abroad.
"A box full of finds has come together in the past three years"
"A
box full of finds
has come together over the past three years," reports Dorlis Bischof, who is often
accompanied
by her 17-year-old
granddaughter
Lena
when searching for the fields
, "because she finds it so exciting".
But often you wouldn't find anything for months.
Or not what we had hoped for, as with the
extensive excavation
last summer near
Jesenwang
.
"Barrows testify that people were settled here, so there should still be a lot - but you just haven't found it yet," says Roman Bischof, shrugging his shoulders.
The consolation:
results
are often
more important than findings
.
Hobby archaeologists from the Fürstenfeldbruck district: Results are often more important than finds
Occasionally Dorlis and Roman Bischof also carry something back to the field - or at least on the path next to it.
Namely, when it turns out during washing and the subsequent, more detailed examination of the object at home that it is "nothing".
Then the material should at least go back to where it came from.
Note:
A 40-minute film about the teaching excavation in Jesenwang last summer can be found on the Internet at www.historischer-verein-ffb.de.
When researching his own family history, the Olching hobby historian Georg Gebhard comes across a particularly colorful figure - a healer.
(By Max-Joseph Kronenbitter)
