Vaihingen is an archaeological site located on the Enz river of Germany, associated with the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) period and dated between about 5300 and 5000 cal BC.
The site was first settled during the earliest LBK period, ca. 5400 BC. The village was encircled by a flat-bottomed fortification ditch. This ditch was used for burials; other burials were in the village proper. Strontium analysis suggests that 42% of people buried in the ditch were nonlocals, compared to only 18% in town.
Some debate concerning this discrepancy continues, because it is unclear whether the difference in burial ritual is a function of chronology--the ditch was used as long as it was visible--or ethnic. Secondly, some investigation of the isotope signatures of the domestic animals appears to be quite broad, suggesting that the 'extra-locality' observed in the humans may not necessarily be the case.
Vaihingen was excavated in 1994 by Rüdiger Krause.
Sources
This glossary entry is part of the About.com Guide to the Linearbandkeramik and the Dictionary of Archaeology
Bentley, R. A., T. D. Price, and Elisabeth Stephan 2004 Determining the ‘local’ 87Sr/86Sr range for archaeological skeletons: a case study from Neolithic Europe. Journal of Archaeological Science 31(4):365-375.
Bickle, Penny and Hofmann Daniela 2007 Moving on: the contribution of isotope studies to the early Neolthic of Central Europe. Antiquity 81(314):1029–1041.
