Early Bronze Age
Early Bronze Age settlements were situated near the Rochuskapelle. People living here had also contact to early Bronze Age groups living more to the south east. This can be proved by typical Wieselburg vessels found at Auhagen in the south of Stillfried. A flint dagger imported from Northern Europe gives insight to far reaching exchange systems in those days.
Grave goods of the Early Bronze Age show clear class distinctions of this society. Class distinctions had been a consequence of the uneven distribution of metal objects. Apart from the farming society new professions concerning the production and distribution of metal objects developed. Necklaces, bracelets and pins of bronze were excavated with crouched inhumations at the Rochusberg and Stillfried/Kirchenberg. Special inhumations in storage pits were found at the Rochusberg and between Mannersdorf and Angern. At the end of the Early Bronze Age an early aristocratic class established a fortified settlement at the Buhuberg between Grub and Dürnkrut.
Middle Bronze Age
The Middle Bronze Age saw the beginning of the settlement at Stillfried/Kirchenberg. Burials beneath big barrows are a clear evidence of an early aristocracy. During the research of F. Felgenhauer a Middle Bronze Age ditch running parallel to the later rampart was unearthed. Most of the traces of a settlement from this period were found in the east of the hill near the precipice to the river March including another very deep ditch and various potsherds under the roman layers. The Bronze Age cemetery above the brickyard of the 20th century had been used until the Middle Bronze Age. Only a few years ago a big bronze leg ring was found in the area of this cemetery.
Late Bronze Age
Single finds within the area of the Late Bronze Age fortification prove the use of this site as a settlement for the duration of the Late Bronze Age. Around 1000 B. C. a cemetery existed in the northeast of Grub.
In the 9th century this settlement on the amber route was fortified – a 23 hectare earthen fortification with a circumference of 1.7 kilometres was built. Big ditches and ramparts protected the flourishing settlement that had far reaching contacts, a high standard metal production and storage pits with high quality seeds. Seeds of cultivated vine from this settlement are the oldest evidence for cultivated vine in Austria. Pits filled with debris from destroyed houses, hidden hoards and burnt elements of the wooden construction of the rampart indicate rather insecure times. Single finds of human skulls are probably relicts of mysterious rites. Burials in big pits within in the settlement – some of the dead seem to have been lying unburied for at least a couple of days - may well be further evidence for war-like circumstances. For reasons we don’t know they were denied a traditional burial at the cemetery of the time.
At the cemetery near the fortification the ashes of the dead burnt on the pyre were buried. This burial rite was executed without exception for several hundred years. A wealthy person, probably with big influence among the people of the urnfield settlement, was given two bridles, iron discs and iron knives, a big bronze knife, a pin for making tattoos and a drinking vessel made from the horn of a bull mounted with bronze on its rim for his last journey. Around 1900 a famous bridle with deers heads was found in one of the graves. In another grave a famous cup was discovered. Since then all similar cups have been named “cups type Stillfried-Hostomice”.
