Roman burial mounds – Graz residents sit on historical treasures

At first glance, the mounds in the Leechwald near the Hilmteich do not suggest that they are traces from Roman times. However, the fascination among the residents of Graz for the Roman graves is apparently greater than initially thought. The first archaeological tour on this subject took place in March under the leadership of the City Archeology Department and in collaboration with the Grätzelinitiative Margaretenbad and was extremely well received: “It almost feels like you are learning secrets that you would not know otherwise. “It’s exciting how close to the modern city are hidden things from the past,” said Daniela and Zoe Schwarz, who expressed their great interest.

The fascination with historical backgrounds defies the rain
Thirty minutes before the tour started, the place at Hilmteich, which had been designated as a meeting point, was slowly but surely filling up. Claudia Beiser from the Grätzelinitiative started handing out the “Horcherlies”, as she affectionately called the audio guides for the tour, joking that there were only fifty of them, but that would be enough given the rain clouds that were making the sky darker and darker.

This estimate was far from the truth, because despite the increasingly bad weather, more and more interested people gathered. Ultimately, there were about 120 people who wanted to view the wheelbarrows and learn more about their background. That is why archaeologist Susanne Lamm announced before the tour started that another tour on this subject would take place in late summer.

A connection with the past
“The barrows in the Leechwald are actually so unknown, even though they are beautifully visible in the terrain,” says the archaeologist. However, for some visitors to the tour, they were not so unknown, but they were still a bit of a mystery: “When we were at school, we always went to gymnastics class at the Hilmteich. I knew the wheelbarrows were around here somewhere, but not exactly where. Now I’m finally seeing her for the first time,” Kathi Brexel said expectantly.

According to Susanne Lamm, it can be assumed that there was an agricultural Roman settlement in the area of ​​the Leechwald and Hilmteich. “The Romans always built their tombs within sight of their country houses. “Usually two to three hundred meters away,” reports the archaeologist. There was probably also a Roman villa near St. Martin Castle, as there are also burial mounds there. However, unlike almost all other state capitals, Graz does not have a Roman base. There was the town of Flavia Solva near Leibnitz in the south. In addition, there were many villages. For example in Bruck an der Mur or Kalsdorf.

Coins as a ferry under the tongue of the dead
The burial chambers in the hills are either a burial chamber made of wood and filled with earth, or a stone chamber. There is also the variant in which the dead bodies were placed on a flat surface and a mound of earth was placed over them, for example because the earth was frozen and burial would otherwise not have been possible. However, there was never a hole. The graves usually contain the remains of one or two people, cooking utensils, remains of drink and food, oil lamps and a coin placed under the tongue of the deceased as a ferry fare for Charon, the ferryman.

The archaeologist knows that opening burial mounds became a popular sport since 1900, because it was believed that there were treasures in the graves, which is not the case. The hills in Leechwald were spared and should all still be intact.

What is Graz’s urban archeology responsible for?
Graz City Archeology was only founded in 2021. It is part of the Graz Museum and is the main point of contact for all finds on city property. Decisive for its creation was the large number of contemporary historical finds that had come to light during the archaeological excavations carried out since 2017 in the former Liebenau camp and on the former Reininghaus brewery site and the resulting question of how to deal with such find. number of mass evenings.

The Archeology Department of the City of Graz is also the point of contact for questions about finds on private property during garden work or attic finds. A special email address has been set up for this purpose. “There were some very strange things there,” Lamm says.