060078 SE Seminar Bachelor Thesis Historical Archeology (2024S)

As part of the bachelor's seminar in historical archaeology, the stratigraphy and finds from the excavations of the early modern hermitage at Falkenstein/St. Gilgen on the pilgrimage route to St. Wolfgang are evaluated and analyzed in an interdisciplinary manner. As part of the course, the site and the finds depot in the St. Gilgen Museum will be visited.
The typo-chronological classification of the finds (utility ceramics, kiln ceramics, glass, costume components, devotional objects, metal finds, bone artifacts, etc.) is practiced in groups by means of comparison and literature research and integrated into the stratigraphic sequence to be created. The aim is the joint analysis of the excavation documentation and the cultural-historical classification of the excavation results in comparison with historical sources and the general history of the 17th - 19th centuries.
Over the centuries, St. Wolfgang developed into the fourth largest pilgrimage site in Europe after Rome, Aachen and Einsiedeln. Huge streams of pilgrims made their way from Altötting via the Falkenstein to Sankt Wolfgang. During the heyday of the pilgrimage in the 17th and 18th centuries, up to 300,000 pilgrims made the journey over the Falkenstein every year. These pilgrims had to be accommodated and fed, they bought devotional objects and other memorabilia, they donated and bought indulgences for the remission of temporal sins in purgatory; in short, the pilgrims were one of the most important economic factors for the area around Lake Wolfgang. A hermitage was built below the church on the Falkenstein, which still exists today, to control the offering sticks and was demolished towards the end of the 19th century. The hermitage was uncovered again in 2011-2012.