Ringwall Viersteinberg

The Ringwall Viersteinberg is a prehistoric earthwork on the Viersteinberg hill in Mittelfranken. It sits 600 metres above sea level and overlooks the wide Altmühl valley. The site was later reused in the early Middle Ages. Today only the low ring of stones remains, protected as a scheduled monument. It lies about 820 metres from Wettelsheim’s Christuskirche. Excavations in 1928 by Heinrich Eidam found a deer-antler hoe and a bronze arm ring. These date the rampart between 1200 and 500 BC, the Early La Tène to Hallstatt period. Kurt Böhner suggested the site may have been built or reused in the early Middle Ages to guard Wettelsheim’s royal estate. Two burial mounds on the nearby Patrichberg belong to the same early period. The wall crowns the hilltop in a rough horseshoe shape, enclosing a limestone outcrop. Its ends drop fifty metres down the northern slope, though the western end was partly quarried away. The original entrance lay on the southern side, flanked by short wall spurs. Inside, archaeologists found blackened cooking pits filled with charcoal, animal bones and sherds. A rectangular pit in the centre measures 2.5 by 2.3 metres and may have been a storage cellar.