The residential area with the adjoining commercial area on the lower Voltastraße is about to start construction.

Before more living space can be created for people, however, the area must be examined in great detail from the next week onwards.

Because Hattersheim was demonstrably a stronghold of the Celts.

Heike Lattka

Correspondent for the Rhein-Main-Zeitung for the Main-Taunus-Kreis.

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The Hessian State Office for Monument Preservation has therefore commissioned the AGDS office to dig in the extensive area. Previous geophysical prospecting showed promise. There are anomalies in the soil that could indicate archaeologically relevant finds. The prospects that further traces of prehistoric times could be hidden underground are therefore not bad.

The researchers are still looking for traces of the earlier Celtic village, which must have been near the numerous graves found.

Mayor Klaus Schindling (CDU) supports the work as much as possible: Only a few towns in the area could point to a Celtic past.

The Celts are the identity of the entire city, he emphasized.

He referred to the specially built Celtic top with the five sandstone steles by the sculptor Kai Wolf and the residential street with the name Celtic Path.

Celtic treasures cause a sensation

In the future museum in the Chocolate Quarter, a complete section will also be dedicated to the Celts.

Schindling reported that 50 finds had already been professionally restored for this purpose.

He hopes that new knowledge about the Celtic village, of which only the first traces have been found so far, will come after the excavations.

Hattersheim has been causing a sensation for more than 20 years with its Celtic treasures.

The archaeologists dug for four weeks in March 1999 on the site of the former Greul nursery after 2400-year-old skeletons and grave goods from the Celtic era were found there during construction work on the “Am Gärtnertor” residential area.

Another six graves and a circle of druids came to light.

The formation is considered unique in all of southern Germany.

For a long time, the search for the Celtic village that would match the graves was sought.

Archaeologists seemed certain that in the first century BC Celts settled near their tombs.

In 2011, it was finally worthwhile for up to twelve excavation participants to work on the construction site of the former Sarotti chocolate factory.

The finds gave in particular information about the everyday life of the Celtic "normal people", who in their simplicity stood in clear contrast to the princely grave on the Glauberg.

Skeleton finds pose a mystery

Traces of settlement from 4400 BC to the 16th / 17th centuries. The 16th century came to light, including shards of tulip cups from the Michelsberg culture (4400 to 3500 BC) or a bone awl for leather processing from the Middle Bronze Age (1600 to 1300 BC). The scientists even identified the remains of a former Landwehr from the 16th and 17th centuries. The then district archaeologist Udo Reckers particularly emphasized the finds from the Celtic era.

But again, skeletal finds were a mystery.

Away from the necropolis, the remains of two women and a child who had died at the same time and were buried together were found in a settlement ditch.

What they died of or why they were not buried in the nearby cemetery probably remains an unsolved mystery.

Unless the new excavations shed light on the darkness.