The Wooden Trackway Pr VII at Diepholz, Dümmer, Lower Saxony, Germany (ca. 2450–2440 BCE)

Abstract

In 2021, the PR7 timber trackway across the raised bog at Diepholz, Lower Saxony, was re-examined. It can now be dated securely by Bayesian modelling to the second half of the 25th century BCE, obviously contemporary with smaller camps in the microregion. The necessity to construct a trackway seems to coincide with a shift to wetter conditions in the northern Lake Dümmer lowland region and towards more diverse settlement pattern. The comparison of our results with trackways and environmental developments in the Campemoor south of the Dümmer indicates temporal differences in the reaction of local ecosystems to general climatic changes as well as in the trackway construction. In spite of that, on a macro level construction peaks of trackways in the northern European plain are identified, which should be analysed further in respect to environmental and societal changes.