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Seven boards line
the path to the barrows of Schandorf. The path leads to the Iron Age graveyard
lying in the Schandorf forest. This burial ground consists of impressive burial
mounds up to 16m high. Most of the barrows date from the Hallstatt period around
750 BC, others from the elder Roman Iron Age.
The area around Schandorf was one of the first populated areas in southern
Burgenland. Around 750 BC, the region was booming due to the mining and smelting
of iron ore south of Schandorf. The then powerful iron princes of the Hallstatt
period were based at the loop of the Pinka river in Burg. The local earth castle
consisted of a plateau of approximately 600m x 250m and offered natural
protection against invading enemies. Through the iron melting the "Iron
Barons" became very rich and powerful. They buried their dead in several
graveyards in the hills to the south, southeast and east of the castle. More
than two hundred huge mounds were created as lasting memorial monuments
for the dead in what is now the Schandorf forest.
Inside Hill 41, which was excavated at the southern end of Group I in 1933, a
stone packing and a grave chamber of huge stone slabs was found. The finds - two
needles with more than one pin head, conical neck vessels with black-red
paintings and figural attachments, a bronze vessel, and iron tools - suggest
that it was a man's grave. The black-red painting on a conical neck vessel also
shows a stylized illustration of a man with a wide-brimmed hat, that was typical
for
festive costumes.
In the Elder Iron Age (Hallstatt culture) from the 8th century BC onwards there
was a significant economic boom in the region of Schandorf-Burg-Eisenberg. The
peasants of that time increasingly specialized in the production of the
sought-after and expensive metal iron. While at first the iron was only used for
jewelry and arms, with the spreading of new technology, the new raw material was
generally used for the production of tools of all kind.
In the forests of the districts of Oberpullendorf and Oberwart about 20,000
glory holes and 1,200 slag places each with 3 to 10 smelting furnaces, mostly
dating from the late La Tène period, are today's evidence of iron mining in
central Burgenland. The most common type is a 1 meter wide, originally nearly
1.5 meters high sunken cupola furnace with an attached work pit. This type of
furnace is known as the "Noric smelting furnace, type Burgenland"
named such due to the location where it was typically found.
The dead were burned in their festive costumes in funeral pyres. The ashes of
the dead were buried in burial chambers together with pottery vessels, which
contained food and drink for the netherworld, the burned costume and arms, tools
and jewelry. Above these chambers, in weeks of work, the relatives of the
deceased often piled up mounds of earth as memorial monuments.
So far there are five barrow fields of the Hallstatt culture known in this
region with a total of 285 burial mounds. The smallest group with 30 hills is in
Badersdorf, a larger group of 84 hills at Eisenberg in the municipal areas of
Burg and Felsöcsatár. The largest number of Hallstatt burial mounds in this
region is located in Schandorf forest, divided into three groups of 150 (Group
1), 11 (Group 2) and 9 hills (Group 4). The 73 lower hills of the groups 3 and 5
are not of the Hallstatt type, they were built in the earlier Roman Iron Age.
The burial mounds are round and have relatively steep slopes. At the foot of
many of these mounds are circular ditches, still visible today, from where the
earth was taken to build the mound.
Earth bridges can also be found across the ditches. Most of the hills are higher
than 10 meters, the biggest ones are up to 16m high with a diameter of 35 to 40
meters.
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