<< News >> Shepherd's shed gives clues to ancient Alp life
Submitted by coldrum on Sunday, 27 September 2009 Page Views: 1453
Multi-periodCountry: Switzerland Type: Ancient Village or SettlementInternal Links:
Archaeologists in a remote region of Switzerland have excavated the ruins of the oldest hut in the Alps, a prehistoric discovery that dates back nearly 3,000 years.
The find in the Silvretta mountains near the Austrian border gives scientists the oldest architectural proof that early Iron Age shepherds spent summers living among the rich alpine grasses, tending to herds and using milk to make cheese, in a way much like farmers today.
"It is perhaps a bit of a cliché for Switzerland, but what is interesting is just how old it is," said Thomas Reitmaier, an archaeologist from Zurich University who led the team.
Carbon dating shows the hut at 2,264 metres in canton Graubünden was being used as early as 800 BC, hundreds of years before the Roman invasions, when pile dwellings dotted Switzerland's lowland lakes and people were of pre-Celtic tribes.
Not much remains of the hut today but Reitmaier and a team of university archeology students have spent the past three years meticulously excavating its foundation, a dry-stacked stone structure that held wood walls and a roof. The centuries had left the site overgrown with thick mud, roots and grasses. The hut could have held four to six people.
"We've known that people have used these summer pastures for thousands of years but the oldest proof of an actual shelter up until now is medieval," Reitmaier said. "Now we have a site that goes much further back."
"We saw something from very far away where the ground looked different than the rest of the area," he said. "We weren't sure at all what it was but I thought perhaps it could be something. So we went and dug a test trench. The results were surprising."
« For sure there are older huts in the Alps. One day someone will find one from the Bronze Age. It's out there. »
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