HEIMBERG, SWITZERLAND—A Bronze Age settlement thought to have been inhabited between 3,200 and 3,500 years ago has been found in the Swiss Plateau, beside the Aare River, according to a Newsweek report. The ancient village likely sat along a route between the Jura Mountains and the Swiss Alps. Researchers from the Archaeological Service of the Canton of Bern (ASCB) discovered the settlement during an excavation conducted ahead of a construction project. “What is exciting about the Heimberg site is that no settlement from the Middle Bronze Age was previously known at this location,” said ASCB archaeologist Regine Stapfer. Pits filled with stones were among the structures uncovered by the project. The stones, Stapfer explained, appear to have been shattered by heat. “It is not clear what these pits with the fragmented stones were used for,” she said. Similar pits have been unearthed at other Middle Bronze Age sites, however. Researchers think they may have been used to provide warmth or to cook food. Clay may have been extracted from other pits at Heimberg, Stapfer added. The clay would have been used to plaster the wicker walls of houses or to produce the abundant ceramics found at the site. “We know of no burial ground for the settlement and therefore have no evidence of the people who inhabited the settlement,” Stapfer concluded. To read about a unique second-millennium B.C. bronze hand unearthed in Switzerland, go to “An Eccentric Artifact,” one of ARCHAEOLOGY’s Top 10 Discoveries of 2018.
