Archaeologists in northern Italy have uncovered the remains of more than 30 houses dating back around 2,500 years, revealing new evidence of everyday life in an important early Iron Age Alpine community.
The extensive settlement was discovered at Galgenbichl in Niederrasen, South Tyrol, where archaeological excavations have been taking place since February ahead of the construction of a new access road serving Antholz and Olang.
Dating from between around 800 and 500 BC, the site represents one of the most significant early Iron Age discoveries made in the region. According to South Tyrol’s Office for Archaeology, it is the first time an Iron Age settlement of this scale has been systematically investigated in the province.
Excavations, which are now nearing completion, have revealed the remains of more than 30 houses alongside ceramics, tools, animal bones and evidence of metalworking.
Together, the discoveries are providing archaeologists with an unusually detailed picture of how people lived, worked and interacted in the Puster Valley more than two millennia ago.
Evidence of everyday Iron Age life
Among the artefacts recovered are tools associated with weaving and spinning, as well as evidence of bronze working and millstones used to grind grain.
Animal remains are also helping researchers reconstruct the diet and economy of the settlement. Cattle bones were particularly common, a finding archaeologists believe could indicate that the inhabitants of Galgenbichl enjoyed a relatively prosperous standard of living.
The village was also far from isolated. Its position in the Puster Valley appears to have facilitated connections beyond the immediate Alpine region, with evidence suggesting its inhabitants maintained contacts with communities in the Venetian area of what is now north-eastern Italy.
Infant burials discovered inside settlement
One of the most striking discoveries, however, concerns the community’s treatment of its youngest members.
Archaeologists identified a small burial ground within the settlement containing only infants. Rather than being cremated, the children had been buried directly within the village.
The practice contrasts with evidence from the nearby Iron Age cemetery at Windschnur, also in Niederrasen, where cremation was used for the dead.
Researchers believe the difference could point to distinct funerary traditions for infants, suggesting that very young children were commemorated and buried differently from older members of the community.
The graves also highlight the realities of childhood during the period. Infant mortality is estimated to have been extremely high, with between 20 and 35 per cent of children thought not to have survived their first year of life.
Major site for Alpine Iron Age archaeology
Together with the cemetery at Windschnur, the Galgenbichl settlement has placed Niederrasen at the centre of research into early Iron Age communities in the Alpine region.
The combination of houses, domestic objects, evidence of crafts, animal remains and burials gives archaeologists an opportunity to reconstruct not only the settlement itself but aspects of the social and economic lives of the people who occupied it between 800 and 500 BC.
South Tyrol provincial councillor Philipp Achammer said the discoveries demonstrated how much of the region’s past remains concealed beneath the modern landscape.
“We drive past places every day whose history we often don’t even know,” Achammer said. “It’s all the more impressive when an entire chapter of our past suddenly becomes visible.”
“The find shows that history often lies right beneath our feet.”
