Peat preserves the organic
Baskets, rope and dugout boats survived thousands of years in the bog.
No machine-readable author provided. AlMare assumed (based on copyright claims). — Public domain · Bene16 — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Bene16 — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Michael Linnenbach at German Wikipedia — CC BY-SA 3.0
An archaeological museum in the town of Bad Buchau at Lake Federsee, a bog landscape in southern Germany that ranks among the richest prehistoric sites in central Europe. The reason is peat. The bogs around the lake preserved organic material for thousands of years: wooden piles, boats hollowed from tree trunks, timber trackways laid across the marsh, and tools, baskets and rope. Some of the trackways date to around three and a half thousand years BC, and are among the oldest constructed roads known anywhere. The museum displays these finds, and outside it Stone Age and Bronze Age houses have been reconstructed and can be entered. The lake itself is an important nature reserve for birds, with a long boardwalk crossing the bog to the water — free, and worth the visit on its own. The site is entirely off the tourist routes and lightly visited.
Baskets, rope and dugout boats survived thousands of years in the bog.
Stone Age and Bronze Age, outdoors, and they can be entered.
The lake and bog are an important nature reserve, crossed by the boardwalk.
Bad Buchau, at Lake Federsee
Because the stagnant water in peat excludes oxygen, and the bacteria that break down organic material need oxygen to work. When wood, leather or textile is buried in waterlogged mud, decay effectively stops. This is the same reason the bog bodies survive — human remains thousands of years old found in northern European bogs with skin and hair intact.
Not on a short visit to Stuttgart. But if archaeology and prehistory interest you it is exceptional in its material, and it combines with Unteruhldingen on Lake Constance in a two-day trip covering the most important prehistoric sites in southern Germany.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet — be the first.