In search of traces from the Bronze Age: Labor am Auerberg has arrived on the researcher Olympus

Bernbeuren has long been a top address for biologists.

A laboratory in the village is now part of the crème de la crème of historical vegetation and agricultural research.

Bernbeuren / Jena

- The scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Jena have been researching human development since the Stone Age since 2014.

They're looking for clues around the world to better understand human history.

The Bernbeur-based biologist Barbara Zach will help them with this.

She has more than 20 years of experience with "archaeobotanical analyzes".

"As the head of the laboratory, I am proud to now belong to the Department of Archeology at the MPI in Jena," says the Bernbeur resident.

The 60-year-old is regularly put buckets full of earth in front of the door.

Most of them come from the excavations carried out by MPI archaeologists.

“In Bernbeuren, we examine the botanical remains that we extract from the samples,” says Zach, explaining the procedure.

"We use it to reconstruct the crops that people cultivated around 3,000 years ago, what they ate and what their environment looked like."

"Something's up in the bush": Bernbeur woman wants to solve puzzles

According to the 60-year-olds, the Bronze Age at that time was so exciting because it was the beginning of the first wave of globalization, and the crops from different countries were distributed all over the world.

Among other things, she is now researching when and how millet got from East Asia to Central Germany.

Another focus of her work is a "special case of the Bronze Age" near the small village of Kuckenburg near Halle.

"Something is up in the bush," says Zach, looking at the excavations in a hilltop settlement.

In the Bronze Age, people were usually burned and buried in urns after their death, the 60-year-old knows.

Not so with Kuckenburg: There whole bodies and other unusual features were found in the ground.

Sometimes two bodies and only one head, sometimes five heads at once, were found, reports the woman from Bernbeer about the puzzles that still have to be solved.

As is well known, Bernbeuren also has one or the other enigmatic in its history to offer.

Zach broke down her tents in Cologne 20 years ago for the village on Auerberg.

“I went into business here for the second time,” says the 60-year-old about her new home.

The reason: The area around Bernbeuren was still a "blank spot" for archaeobotanists at that time.

“It is a paradise for biologists,” says Zach enthuses about the areas on the Auerberg which she would like to put under nature protection.

Bernbeur laboratory manager well known in the area

The 60-year-old is therefore well known in the town as a committed environmentalist, especially in her role as a member of the board of the “Auerberg Interest Group”.

The purpose of the association was and is to preserve the Auerberg in such a way that its cultural landscape preserves its character, its calm, its dignity and originality.

From 2006 onwards, the members fought against further massive development of the mountain.

There were plans for a hotel on the "Swabian Rigi".

Zach and her colleagues opposed this with a referendum, the hotel was never built.

For a long time the Auerberg was also a paradise for archaeologists whom Zach later got to know.

Above all, they found traces of a Roman settlement and fortifications on the mountain.

Barabara Zach does not believe in the legendary city "Damasia", which the Celts are said to have built on the "Swabian Rigi" before the Romans.

Volker Thiel, who lived in Stötten for a long time, put forward this thesis.

The "evidence" presented by him are consistently rejected by the archaeologists of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation.

“They too had looked for Celtic remains and found nothing,” says Zach.

The 60-year-old nevertheless appreciates Thiel's publications on the Celts at Auerberg: "Something like that is missing for the Romans."

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