Castle on the Swabian Jura: What Did These Walls Protect?

The first obstacle is the grass. Sharp-edged and stubborn, it resists the trowel as Malte Klarhof scrapes it from the soil on a mountain peak in the Swabian Jura.

Klarhof, a fourth-semester archaeology student, works through the dry turf and a thin layer of humus. A few centimetres below, he reaches a confusing scatter of stones. It looks chaotic and meaningless, but the excavation marks the beginning of a journey into the past.

The peak rises above all the surrounding mountains. In the Middle Ages, it held a castle, although only a few sections of wall remain visible today. Hidden in the mountain forest, the site had attracted little attention. Almost nothing was known about its history, and many residents of nearby villages had forgotten it.

Those who still remembered the castle reduced it to “just a few old walls.” The archaeological work is beginning to challenge that view. Beneath the grass and soil, researchers have found traces of a historic arms race and are asking what the fortifications were built to protect. The answer suggested by the excavation is stark: fear helped shape the site.

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just a few old walls