Cult fireplace of Zedau

The cult fireplace of Zedau is located in Zedau, a district of Osterburg in the northeastern Altmark in Saxony-Anhalt. In the years 1970–1973, 117 fireplaces were excavated in connection with the investigation of a Late Bronze Age settlement site. The pitches are collections of similar fireplaces, which were almost always set up in an exposed location and in the immediate vicinity of the water. They are sometimes located near Bronze Age graves and mostly away from settlements. The fireplaces, which can be found randomly or in rows depending on the place where they were found, very rarely contain finds and are hardly detectable above ground.

In Scandinavia and northern Germany, the fermentation pits, which were first detected in 1906, are a phenomenon of the Younger Bronze Age and the Iron Age. Recent research no longer refers to such sites as fermentation pits, but as cult fire or fireplace sites. In 1989, Sigrid Heidelk-Schacht already listed 30 such places in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and in the north of Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt, including Zedau.

Wikipedia