The Opfermoor Vogtei is an open-air museum at the location of a prehistoric and protohistoric sacrificial bog () in the municipality of Vogtei, Thuringia, in Germany. It lies within the former municipality of Oberdorla, approximately from Niederdorla, and the site is also known by those names.
The site, which includes a shallow lake, was a supra-regional cult site from the Hallstatt Period (6th century BCE) to the Migration Age (5th century CE) developed by people whose descendants became, in Friedrich Maurer's nomenclature, the Rhine-Weser Group of Germanic people. It is the largest known Iron Age cult site in Central Europe and has yielded important information about pre-Germanic and Germanic religious practices. Excavations took place there between 1957 and 1964, and recovered artifacts and reconstructions of shrines are presented in an open-air museum on the site, which includes a reconstructed village, and an associated museum in Niederdorla.
Site
The site is a natural depression in which groundwater collected, forming a marsh and an area of open water roughly in extent; beginning around 100 BCE as established by studies of the sediment layers and peat, sedimentation reduced the extent of open water. Peat cutting began in 1947 and has again increased the size of the lake; the prehistoric discoveries were made during peat harvesting.
Archaeological investigation
Peat cutting began at the site in 1947, leading to the discovery of archaeological deposits the following year. From 1957 until 1964, the site was excavated under the leadership of Günter Behm-Blancke, the director of the Museum für Ur- und Frühgeschichte Thüringens (Museum of the Prehistory and Protohistory of Thuringia) in Weimar, revealing circular enclosures of hazel branches, in the centre of which were altars with wooden cult figurines. Numerous bones of domesticated animals were found, above all of cattle but also including horses, sheep, goats, pigs, and a domestic cat; some wild animals: deer, bison, wolves, wild boar, otters, at least 27 pike, a fox, and a turtle; and 35 species of domesticated and wild birds. There were also human bones (from at least 40 different individuals), with the damage to the latter indicating human sacrifice: in one case in particular, the head and extremities had been hacked off and sunk in the bog, weighted down with branches, and the tools used had also been broken and sunk. The finds at this site are the best known archaeological evidence of Germanic human sacrifice. In addition there were a cultic boat, weapons which had presumably been used to make the sacrifice, harvest offerings such as bundles of flax, a variety of everyday objects and tools, and pieces of wood with worked ends that were probably used for divination in association with the sacrifices. In all at least 86 distinct cultic locations have been identified on-site. The finds originate from various parts of Roman Germania, and are not associated with any one Germanic tribe, suggesting a cult-place serving more than the immediate region. The circular cult-place was built by the Hermunduri in the 1st century BCE and became an important religious centre during the Migration Age.
The largest prehistoric settlement in Thuringia was excavated nearby at the Mallinden. The reconstructed buildings at the museum are based on examples found there.
Interpretation
Dating of the finds showed the site to have been used for cultic purposes from the Hallstatt Period (6th century BCE) to long after the arrival of Christianity, with isolated depositions in the 11th and 12th centuries CE. Behm-Blancke identified five different modes of sacrifice (pulverised bones scattered on the ground; carefully cleaned, entire bones either piled or buried at the lakeside, with the skull on top or placed on a pole; leg-bones placed together beside a knocked-down offering pole, or tied together, with no skull present; leg-bones and skull deposited together in the lake, presumed to have been originally the animal's hide with legs and head intact, placed on a pole; skull alone, either placed on a pole or deposited on the ground or in the lake), and distinguished bog, lake, lakeside and spring sacrifices. The cultic nature of the depositions is clear, although opinions have varied as to whether the isolated bones, particularly skulls, represent simple offerings or the remains of sacramental feasts, which given the absence of some parts of the skeleton would have taken place elsewhere.