“Archaeologists surveying Switzerland’s Lake Lucerne have discovered the remains of a submerged Bronze Age village.
As Swissinfo.ch reports, the new finds suggest that the area around the lake was settled 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. Though researchers have long searched for proof of early habitation in the Lucerne region, a thick layer of mud had obscured traces of the village until recently.
Per a statement from the local government, construction of a pipeline at Lake Lucerne offered underwater archaeologists the chance to examine the lakebed up close. The first dive took place in December 2019; between March 2020 and February 2021, reports Swissinfo.ch, the team recovered about 30 wooden poles and 5 ceramic fragments at depths of roughly 10 to 13 feet.
“These new finds from the Lucerne lake basin confirm that people settled here as early as 3,000 years ago,” says the statement, per Google Translate. “[W]ith this evidence, the city of Lucerne suddenly becomes around 2,000 years older than has been previously proven.”
Experts used radiocarbon analysis to date the artifacts to about 1000 B.C., when the lake level was more than 16 feet lower than it is today, writes Garry Shaw for the Art Newspaper. According to the statement, these conditions “formed an ideal, easily accessible settlement area” around the lake basin.
The team identified the wooden sticks found at the site as supports used in pile dwellings, or prehistoric coastal houses that stood on stilts. Dwellings of this kind were common in and around the Alps between 5000 and 500 B.C., notes Unesco, and can provide researchers with useful insights into Europe’s Neolithic period and Bronze Age.
For now, the scholars’ research is limited to the trench surrounding the underwater pipeline. Traces of other submerged settlements are likely hidden nearby, but the team will need additional funding to investigate the area further.”
View the whole story here: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/archaeologists-uncover-bronze-age-settlement-switzerland-180977651/