Burial and settlement during the Early Pre Roman Iron Age in south central Jutland (original) (raw)

The area of modern Vejen municipality, located in the interior of south-central Jutland, is situated near several of the largest known urnfield sites in southwestern Jutland, such as Aarupgaard, Aarre and Uldal. However, the period of the Danish urnfield tradition, the Early Pre-Roman Iron Age (500–250/200 BC), is not well represented archaeologically, especially in comparison to the region along the west coast of Jutland. This is despite 30 years of intensive development-led archaeology, where many other prehistoric periods are well represented. This paper will survey the archaeological evidence for burial and settlement during the Early Pre-Roman Iron Age in the micro-region of Vejen. It will present the only three investigated urnfield sites, Foldingbro, Tuesbøl and Kalvmose, as well as the single circular ditch urn burial Rønnehave, which is the region’s only 14C-dated burial from the period. The paper will present the contemporary settlement evidence for the study area, which is dominated by refuse pits and relatively few and poorly preserved house-structures, along with the methodological problems concerning these sites and what they represent archaeologically. The low frequency of burial and settlement sites shows that the study area, while clearly a cultural part of the broader Early Pre-Roman Iron Age Urnfield tradition, was peripheral to the more intensively utilised regions along the southwest coast of Jutland.