Leeuwarden-Bullepolder 2015: Bewoning op het hoogveen in de Midden-IJzertijd

Samenvatting

Leeuwarden-Bullepolder 2015: habitation on a peat bog in the Middle Iron Age. In the summer of 2015, the GIA excavated the remains of a terp (dwelling mound) in the Bullepolder (Leeuwarden, province of Friesland). During an earlier excavation in 2001 and 2002, archaeologists had found traces of peat extraction in a clay-on-peat landscape dating back to the Late Iron Age, and it became clear that the terp had been raised in the Roman Period. The recent excavation confirmed the site’s occupation during the Roman Period, but also brought to light remains of an earlier habitation phase dating back to the Middle Iron Age, when the area still was part of a raised bog. This is an important result, because until now it was generally assumed that in the northern Netherlands the earliest peat reclamations started in the Late Iron Age.