The 11th Ergersheim Experiment took place from March 21 - 23, 2025.
As in previous years, various teams and participants worked on their projects, including the continuation of work on the reproduction of well corner posts based on a find from Ostrov, work with jadeite axes, experiments with flint chisels, work on a blank for a Roman workbench made of oak wood, and experiments with copper axes.
Some of the projects are presented in more detail below..
Location: 49.542888 North, 10.359050 East
Reconstruction of a Linear Pottery well with grooved corner posts (finding from Ostrov, CZ1))
Bernhard Muigg concentrated on the corner posts of the well construction based on previous tests at the Ergersheim Experiments in 2019 and 2023. The main focus here was on three details, namely 1. the tip (lower end), 2. the circumferential notch and 3. the longitudinal grooves. In addition to the work on the wood, towing tests were carried out with a 6 m long and 2–3 cm thick rope made of lime bast by Claudia Groß. While the production and function of the tip and notch in connection with the wood transport could be understood, detailed questions remain unanswered regarding the production of the longitudinal groove, which will be answered in 2026.
Flint chisels
Wulf Hein tested chisels made from flintstone. These were actually chisels that were used for woodworking in the Neolithic period, similar to modern chisels. He tested the carving of a groove and a mortise in an oak post using various chisels, both shafted and unshafted. It turned out that, contrary to expectations, the tools can be used with almost the same impact force with a wooden mallet as a steel tool. The most important result, however, is that a shank significantly improves the handling of the chisel blade. A Danish colleague is currently carrying out microscopic examinations on preserved originals.
Blank for a Roman workbench
Rüdiger Schwarz once again used replicas of Roman tools. An oak with a diameter of around 40 cm was felled with the characteristic wedge-shaped axe and the trunk was then cut to a length of almost 3 meters. Using an iron wedge and several wooden wedges, the trunk section was split down the middle and then hewn into a plank with a rectangular cross-section using an axe and dolabra. This blank was then made into a workbench, modeled on an original from the Saalburg, a Roman cohort fort of the Limes Germanicus in Hesen.
Tool blades of basalt, shell limestone, red sandstone and copper
As part of investigations into the Early Neolithic use of local lithic resources along the German Wine Route (Palatinate region), Thomas Bartz, Norbert Hirschinger and Michael Müller tested the working efficiency of Linear Pottery adzes (flat hoes and shoe last wedges) and real hoes on a hornbeam. All axes were reconstructed from finds from the Herxheim sacrificial ditches. Real hoes here are axe-like shafted stone blades made from local raw materials such as Foster basalt, shell-bearing limestone and red sandstone, which, as the name hoe suggests, were used as tools for earthworks of all kinds. Furthermore, a 4-edged, thin-bladed, unsharpened flint hoe was used, as found in Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria. In principle, it proved that all hoes can also be used for processing wood. However, their efficiency is moderate to low compared to hatchets/axes.
In a second experiment, two copper axes were tested comparatively. A four-edged axe, only slightly over-forged with a relatively blunt-angled cutting edge and a cold-forged edge bar axe with a pointed forged cutting edge. Unfortunately, this experiment had to be terminated prematurely as both spars broke. The first result is that the pointed forged edge bends again and again if you hit it too hard. After straightening, however, it works perfectly again.
Supporting program
After dinner together on Saturday, the program included a series of lectures by the participants. On Sunday morning, there was a joint excursion to the Gollachgau Museum in Uffenheim to see the recently opened Neolithic exhibition “Der Gollachgau – im Herzen Europas” (“The Gollachgau - in the heart of Europe"), before getting back to work in the forest.
Impressions
Fränkische Landeszeitung (German)
References
- Michal Rybníček, Petr Kočár, Bernhard Muigg, Jaroslav Peška, Radko Sedláček, Willy Tegel, Tomáš Kolář: World’s oldest dendrochronologically dated archaeological wood construction.Journal of Archaeological Science Volume 115, March 2020, 105082, DOI 10.1016/j.jas.2020.105082