Content:
Hillfort research highly depends on chronological information. Without, all statements and theories about cultural affiliation, functional interdependencies or their role in the cultural landscape and society remain pure hypothesis. Findings and especially the most present category of pottery from excavations on plateaus, ramparts or ditches, on the contrary, are often difficult to date.
Since 2014 in the frame of the project “Continuity of research and research of continuity” (funded by the Academy of Science and Literature Mainz, Germany), several hillforts in the Kaliningrad Region of Russia were investigated to receive chronological information. Especially the rampart-and-ditch systems contain data about the whole live span of the monuments. In order to avoid costly and expensive excavations, a motor driven vibra core hammer with metal probes of 60 mm diameter and 1m length is used for conducting series of drillings on ramparts and ditches of hillforts, in combination with a larger series of 14C-dating.
This methodological approach, internally called “speed-dating”, allows for the creation of schematic profile sections and their dating by extracting datable organic material even from greater depths and hence from the initial phases of rampart construction.
Since the first successful investigations in Apuolė (Lithuania) in 2014 the method has been further developed and applied to 13 so far not or only roughly dated hillforts in the Kaliningrad Region of Russia between 2014 and 2018 as the main working area in the project. The results show, that also in the Kaliningrad region hillforts emerge already at the end of the Bronze age and form a stable factor of the cultural landscape between the pre-Roman Iron Age and the 13th centuries AD until the arrival of the Teutonic Order.
The paper describes the method of using drillings for dating and discusses the results against the archaeological background of the Baltic Region.
Keywords:
fortifications, hillforts, coring strategy, 14C dating, Kaliningrad Region of Russia