The main intention of my Ph.D. project is to carry out a multidisciplinary analysis on Germanic settlement structures in North and Northwestern Germany based on archaeological sites and ancient written sources. By determining the spatio-temporal distribution and orientation of settlement indicators as well as corresponding changes and developments from the 1st to the 3rd century AD, patterns within the archaeological sites will help to reveal the composition of Germanic society on local and regional scales. The almost contemporaneous ancient written sources from different Roman authors provide additional information on the otherwise non-literate Germanic culture, offering potential background knowledge for an interpretation of archaeological evidence. This project intends to close an academic void between existing archaeological research on the Pre Roman and the Celtic Iron Ages, on the one hand, and the Early Middle Age, on the other hand, by complementing earlier approaches with new scientific methods.

This project will first be concerned with methods of settlement and landscape archaeology in an intra- and interregional analysis. The main focus lies on multidisciplinary approaches that were first realised for similar research areas in the late 1960's and 70's, whereby new modern scientific methods and resources will be applied as mentioned above. Ancient written sources concerning Germanic culture have to be treated as subjective Roman points of view, which nevertheless possibly refer to reliable facts. Thus, information from ancient reports can be directly evaluated by choosing reliable authors, translations, and their most objective statements to obtain crucial information illuminating past archaeological structures. The use of geographical information systems (GIS) and a relational database will facilitate the survey and the ensuing evaluation. Mappings and analyses including additional information from earlier works on archaeobiology for the same timeframe and region will be implemented. The developed instruments will also simplify orientation towards the more advanced states of research in Scandinavia and the Netherlands while formulating an interpretation of local phenomena in North and Northwestern Germany. For this project, material filed and documented within the last three decades in the archives of the State Offices for the Preservation of Monuments in Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Lower Saxony, Bremen and North-Rhine Westphalia will be evaluated. In the survey, scientific literature, field work, and a compilation of samples adjustable for typochronological and natural scientific methods of dating and provenance analyses will be included.