Gräberfeld Bettelbühl

The early Celtic burial site of Bettelbühl lies two and a half kilometres south-east of the Heuneburg in the broad, flat Danube meadows of Herbertingen. The name Bettelbühl points to poor soil, while the nearby district Gesöd means swampy meadows. Before drainage, the river once wandered across the valley floor, leaving only the largest mound standing three and a half metres high with a base fifty metres wide. Six of the seven burial mounds have been flattened by centuries of ploughing, leaving only the protected Bettelbühl mound clearly visible. Archaeologists first noticed the two northern mounds in 2000 when sherds of funeral pottery appeared in ploughed fields. In 2006 the Society for Pre- and Early History in Württemberg and Hohenzollern excavated the sites during teaching digs. One yielded a nine-metre square grave pit lined with gravel and containing fragments of pottery and a single long bone. The other contained several cone-necked vessels, some with tiny ladles, and a ribbed plate, all lightly fired for funerary use. In 2005 archaeologist Siegfried Kurz found a child’s grave with gold-covered bronze brooches, gold pendants, glass beads and bronze rings, suggesting links to the Heuneburg princely seat. In 2010 the State Office for Monument Preservation uncovered a four-by-five-metre wooden chamber grave containing two female skeletons. One was richly adorned and became known as the ‘Celtic princess’. The other held only a bronze arm-ring, leaving its identity uncertain. The grave’s oak planks were so well preserved in waterlogged soil that the entire block was lifted in December 2010. Laboratory work later revealed over forty gold ornaments and more than a hundred amber pieces. A second chamber grave, found in 2019, was lifted in 2020 as an eighty-tonne block for further study.