Hügelgräber im Kraichgau

The Kraichgau hills in northern Baden-Württemberg hold scattered Bronze- and Iron-Age burial mounds. They lie within the old borders of the Grand Duchy of Baden and were first studied by local antiquarians Ernst Wagner and Karl Wilhelmi in the 19th century. Their work showed that these mounds belong to different prehistoric periods, from the Bronze Age to the La Tène era.

The Eppingen group near the old Baden-Württemberg border has fifteen mounds between ten and seventeen metres wide and about one metre high. One mound contains a central shaft that probably leads to a burial chamber. Nearby, Manfred Pfefferle later found twenty more mounds in the Eppinger Forest, while Karl Wilhelmi excavated two in 1842 that held at least two burials each. At Gemmingen a single large mound shows a double burial with bronze rings and pottery from two different ages.

Other groups lie in the woods around Bad Rappenau and Sinsheim. The Heidenschlag site has sixteen or seventeen mounds, some with multiple burials and blue-bead necklaces. The Sinsheim-Dühren group has fourteen mounds with eighty burials and yielded iron swords, spearheads and brooches. Near Hoffenheim seven mounds survive, though they are now overgrown. In Wössingen five mounds from the La Tène period can be reached from a forest car park, but they are hard to spot among the undergrowth.