PROJECT INFO
The project's major goal is to make archaeological landscapes
of the Danube region more visible and thereby more attractive
for its integration into sustainable cultural tourism, regionally,
nationally and internationally.
Following the Iron Age Danube route the international partners
in the project Danube's Archaeological eLandscapes identified
heritage elements that are illustrative of common European
memory, history and heritage:
Based on archaeological heritage from 5 different periods
the following routes can be explored in this web database:
Palaeolithic (Stone Age route), Neolithic (Neolithic route),
Copper Age (Copper Age Route), Bronze Age (Bronze Age route)
and Late Antiquity and Early Medieval Period (Barbarian’s route).
Click on an icon to explore a period!
The river Danube is one of Europe’s great natural highways and passes through a great swathe of central and eastern Europe, connecting nations, peoples and cultures.
During the last Ice Age beasts roamed this land, which attracted human hunters:
Neanderthals and our own species.
With the end of the Ice Age in the 10th millennium BC, many of these megafauna vanished forever.
Within a few centuries, the landscape was cloaked in dense forests, and the Danube provided one of the few easily navigable routes through this tree covered landscape.
In the 6th millennium BC agriculture was introduced from
the Middle East and the Danube played a central role of
the transmission of farming through eastern and central Europe. The forests were felled, the landscape opened up
to provide farmland for the people of the New Stone Age.
With a surplus supply of food the Danube’s population
began to grow, settlements became increasingly
permanent, pottery was manufactured, inequalities
emerged and excess food enabled specialisations.
Next to materials of stone, wood and bone, which had been used for
thousands of years, first metalworking techniques in Europe emerged in the 5th-3rd millennium
BC. This allowed production and distribution of new everyday objects,
tools and weapons. For a select few in society, there was the chance to acquire objects made from more exotic,
luxurious products fashioned from copper and gold.
Just as with the spread of agriculture,
the Danube provided a crucial conduit to transmit these metals and the knowledge of how to work them.
Around 2200 BC a major development occurred.
No longer were metals worked in their base form. Now they were mixed to form a shimmering alloy: bronze.
Combined with the introduction of the wheel and horse, this was a period of profound changes.
Fortified settlements were built, elite women donned elaborate costumes, and a warrior elite rode to battle wielding bronze spears and swords.