Burgstallkogel (Sulm valley)

The Burgstallkogel (458 m; also known as Grillkogel) is a hill situated near the confluence of the Sulm and the Saggau river valleys in Southern Styria in Austria, about 30 km south of Graz between Gleinstätten and Kleinklein. The hill hosted a significant settlement of trans-regional importance from 800 BC to about 600 BC. Surrounding the hill is one of the largest iron age necropolises in continental Europe, originally composed of at least 2,000 tumuli.

The Burgstallkogel is prominently situated on a ridge that runs from east to west, straddling the southern banks of the Sulm valley, on a trade route that crossed the Koralpe mountain range from Carinthia, connecting to the southern parts of the basin of Graz and onward to the Hungarian plains. The settlement apparently controlled long-distance trade along this route, which had been in use since neolithic times, and prospered from it. The community exchanged goods far into Italy and into the Balkans, and might have exploited the iron ore deposits that exist on the hill.

The first significant habitation on the hill was established during the late Urnfield culture period around 800 BC, when hilltop settlements became common in continental Europe. Although the name "Burgstallkogel" (a generic German popular term for a hill fortification) suggests that historical knowledge of the hill persisted until the Middle Ages, very little was known to archaeological science until 1982-1984 when an exploratory dig established facts which led to significant improvements of our conception of the "Sulm Valley Subgroup" of the Eastern Hallstatt culture.

Four cultural layers were identified containing pottery ranging from the late Urnfield culture to the mid-Hallstatt culture period (Ha B2/3 to Ha B3/C1). Erosion has destroyed the youngest layers of the late Hallstatt period, especially on the summit where nobility is likely to have resided. While the earliest settlement traces are believed to extend over much of the hill on all its sides (the southern slopes are covered by vineyards and are almost impossible to investigate archeologically), the settlement contracted towards the mountain top after it was destroyed by fire twice (around 750 and 700 BC) during the subsequent Hallstatt period. It was essentially abandoned shortly after 600 BC. The Burgstallkogel settlement itself was not fortified (although a system of Hallstatt-era trenches was found close to the Sulm valley bottom at the northwestern side of the hill, which is most exposed to attacks), and archeology gives no indications that it ever suffered from war; the two catastrophic fires seem to have been accidental.

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