Restanten van rituelen. Deposities in het oudste huis van Ezinge

Evidence of rituals - Depositions in the oldest house of Ezinge Preservation conditions differ considerably from one part of the northern Netherlands to another. In the province of Drenthe, faint traces of settlements with houses of a few generations have been found on the acidic sandy soils together with only potsherds and stones, whereas the bogs and moors have yielded many excellently preserved organic remains. Thanks to the work of Wijnand van der Sanden we know much about ritual practices associated with the liminal bogs and moors. However, as organic materials often played an important role in ritual deposition, we know hardly anything about ritual practices in the settlements on the sandy soils. The northern coastal area is entirely different in this respect. In this former salt marsh, settlements were built on artificial dwelling mounds known as terpen that were inhabited for many centuries or even millennia. Owing to the excellent preservation conditions of wet clay and dung, organic remains, including the lower parts of houses, are usually well preserved, making it possible to identify evidence of rituals and learn more about ritual practice in these settlements (Nieuwhof 2015). But as the focus of research has always been on the terpen, we are less well informed about ritual practice outside the settlements, in the liminal zones of this landscape. The sand and peat landscapes of the interior and the clay district of the northern coastal area may be considered complementary: ritual deposits in the bogs and moors give an idea of what may be expected in liminal zones outside the terp settlements of the north, while evidence of rituals in the terp settlements shows what kind of rituals may have been performed in contemporaneous settlements in inland sandy areas. The most extensively excavated terp settlement is Ezinge in the province of Groningen. This settlement, which was first occupied around 500 BC, yielded a lot of evidence of rituals showing the diversity of ritual practice in settlements. Many of the deposits are associated with houses. The oldest excavated house was a longhouse incorporating a byre. The house’s building phase and as many as three consecutive occupation phases, each with a separate hearth, could be identified. Rituals were performed during the dwelling’s construction and after each phase, before the floor was raised with a new layer and repairs were made to the house. During the construction work three animals (a horse, a cow and a sheep) were killed and parts of them were probably eaten; the remainder was placed against the outer wall and covered with the first build-up layer. When the occupants abandoned the house they arranged large wooden objects such as parts of disc wheels on the floor. Other items, in particular cube-shaped stones, were deposited in the consecutive hearths. These deposits demonstrate that the house was of paramount importance to its inhabitants, and they also imply continuity of the household. Things were undoubtedly no different on the inland sandy soils. Although any evidence of them is hard to identify, similar rituals must have been performed in settlements in those areas too.