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Review article
Mycenaeans in Bavaria? Amber and gold from
the Bronze Age site of Bernstorf
Anthony Harding1& Helen Hughes-Brock2
Rupert Gebhard &Rüdiger Krause.Bern-
storf: Archäologisch-naturwissenschaftliche Analysen der
Gold- und Bernsteinfunde vom Bernstorfer Berg bei
Kranzberg, Oberbayern (Bernstorf-Forschungen 1;
Abhandlung und Bestandskataloge der Archäologis-
chen Staatssammlung 3; Frankfurter Archäologische
Schriften 31). 2016. 319 pages, numerous colour and
b&w illustrations, tables. München: Archäologische
Staatssammlung; 978-3-927806-43-6 €49.
In August 1998 the
German archaeological
world was stunned
when two amateur
archaeologists found
decorated gold-sheet
ornaments on a hill
in Bavaria north of
Munich, near a farm named Bernstorf, in the
commune of Kranzberg. A Bronze Age fortified
enclosure was known there, local amateurs having
excavated it earlier in the 1990s; later, permission
was granted for gravel extraction, trees were cleared
and it was in this disturbed area that the gold
appeared. The authorities were quickly alerted.
Both the Staatssammlung in Munich (Bavarian
State Archaeological Museum) and the Bayerisches
Landesamt für Denkmalpflege (BLfD, Bavarian State
Office for Monument Care) took part in inspections
and, subsequently, excavations. More gold, including
a ‘diadem’, appeared and, in late September 1998,
perforated lumps of amber. Then in November
2000, on the edge of an area under excavation by the
BLfD, came the sensational discovery of two incised
pieces of amber hailed as Mycenaean.
Were these finds genuine or fake? Heated debate
began quickly (with much attention in the public
media), initially conducted along collegial academic
1Department of Archaeology, University of Exeter, Laver Building, North Park Road, Exeter EX4 4QE, UK
(Email: a.f.harding@exeter.ac.uk)
212 Richmond Road, Oxford OX1 2JJ, UK (Email: helen.hughesbrock@googlemail.com)
lines, but becoming increasingly personal and
emotional. Divisions were very obvious at a meeting
in Munich in October 2014, which one of us
attended, generously invited by the authors of the
volume under review here. This volume presents
the range of specialist studies that they have
commissioned, along with detailed discussion of
the finds and find circumstances, in order that
authenticity or otherwise can be demonstrated, and
readers who remain sceptical are challenged to justify
their opinion. In particular, the analyses of the
gold conducted by Ernst Pernicka in Mannheim
have created two camps: ‘believers’ (the authors,
supported by, among others, the late lamented
Bernhard Hänsel) and ‘sceptics’ (principally Pernicka
and Harald Meller, director of the State Museum
for Prehistory in Halle/Saale). We cannot cover this
debate in detail but must make readers aware of
it, as Pernicka’s views are repeatedly criticised in
the book. Meanwhile, for amber, the problem is
that amber bearing Linear B signs is unparalleled
in Greece (strangely, Harding and Hughes-Brock
(1974) is nowhere cited); could it really turn up in
Germany?
Part A gives archaeological and scientific analyses
by Gebhard and Krause; Part B, 18 specialist
contributions. After a brief introduction, Chapter A2
discusses the question of puzzling finds, and fakes,
with reference to the Nebra Sky Disc—a surprising
inclusion, but intended to show that when certain
unknown or controversial aspects are compared (tab.
2, p. 43), Bernstorf comes off better than Nebra.
There are indeed uncertainties about Nebra, but
most scholars accept the Disc and its association
with the accompanying swords as genuine, despite
divergent statements from the two finders. Why,
then, we are asked, accept Nebra but not Bernstorf?
© Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2017
antiquity 91 359 (2017): 1382–1385 doi:10.15184/aqy.2017.147
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Chapter A3 outlines the topography, the location of
the various excavations and the findspots of the gold
and amber. Bernstorf has three sets of ramparts: me-
dieval, Hallstatt and an extensive Middle Bronze Age
occupation, initially unfortified and later enclosed by
a timber-framed rampart (with the felling date of the
timbers placed at 1340 BC), which was extensively
burned some time later (comparisons with vitrified
forts in ʻEnglandʼ(recte Scotland) are mentioned).
The full excavation report awaits publication.
Chapter A4 details the find circumstances, listing
the dates and finders. The contribution by Claudia
Rohde and BLfD colleagues (part of B5) reproduces
all the relevant documents as preserved in the
archive. As Krause and Gebhard admit, almost all
the controversial finds were made in the absence of
professional archaeologists, mostly by a local doctor,
Manfred Moosauer, and the late Traudl Bachmeier,
both members of the Freising Archaeological Society.
The former president of the society and district
Heimatpfleger (unpaid local history curator), Erwin
Neumair, believed from the start, and said openly,
that the gold had been planted by Moosauer.
There are plainly suspicious elements: one of the
documents, a memo by M. Pietsch from the BLfD
(also mentioned by Krause and Gebhard, to their
credit), describes how a ‘clairvoyant’ brought along
by Moosauer ‘found’ gold within seconds, and
later a volunteer found amber just where Moosauer
had told him to dig. Almost all the gold-sheet
objects, and much of the amber—most notably the
two engraved pieces—were found over a period of
years by Moosauer and Bachmeier working alone
(pp. 272–73).
Questions about the amber were expounded, scepti-
cally, by Hughes-Brock (2011). Gebhard (1999: 11–
18) originally mentioned Mycenae only as part of
a sober parallel hunt for the gold diadem and did
not include the six pieces of perforated amber found
lying nearby. The sensational ‘Mycenaean’ amber
was not unearthed until 2000, when Moosauer and
Bachmaier, working on a Saturday when BLfD staff
were not present, were entrusted by the director, Karl
Heinz Rieder, with going over the disturbed area.
Some 0.59m from the earlier findspot of the gold,
they came upon two amber objects: a “triangular
amber plate engraved on both sides” with a face and
three “magic signs”; and an “amber seal” bearing three
Linear B signs and a schematic depiction of the 1998
diadem (pp. 51–53, 71–72; ‘Object A’ and ‘Object
B’ in previous publications).
Scientific investigations began at once (Chapter A7).
Infra-red spectroscopy predictably showed a Baltic
origin. Weathering and marks of working are more
complicated, amber being very sensitive to age
and micro-environment. Fluorescence tests on the
‘seal’ are interpreted as revealing an original object
with secondary ancient working. The photographs
of modern and ancient perforations solve nothing,
as ancient perforated pieces were certainly present.
Microscopic analysis and digital enlargements can
lead to misunderstanding, hence the sharp criticism
(p. 123) of an unpublished report based on detailed
examination of the amber by Katharine Verkooijen
(it seems strange to criticise a document that is still
unknown to the scholarly world). Questions remain
about scraps of gold detected inside the perforation
and about an unidentified material in the incisions.
Gebhard and Rieder, in unfamiliar territory, con-
sulted specialists about the Linear B but missed
some significant points. Thus, in earlier work,
the face engraved on the triangular amber plate,
compared repeatedly to Schliemann’s gold ‘Mask
of Agamemnon’, was coupled with the Linear B—
generations too late. That mistake has now been
rectified and here the authors compare the face
with the later ‘Lady of Phylakopi’ (p. 129, fig. 85),
the two amber pieces supplying background to a
proposed wooden cult statue that might have worn
the gold diadem. Moreover, close examination reveals
one corner of the mouth to have been re-incised
to create a more pronounced smile, and as smiling
faces predominate on Mycenaean idols (so we are
told), this is another proof of authenticity. This is a
desperate argument—there is no ʻMycenaean smileʼ.
The ‘magic signs’ on the reverse of the amber plate
were discussed by Janko (2015: 58–59, fig. 2), but
offered him no obvious reading. The ‘seal’, so called
because it is perforated, is likened to two Minoan seals
from the Cretan seal workshop at Mallia, destroyed
in Middle Minoan IIB (late seventeenth century BC;
p. 128, fig. 83). The observation that beaked jugs
(Schnabelkannen), of the shape depicted on one of the
seals, were still well known in the fourteenth century
BC is irrelevant.
It is telling that the only study of the Linear B by a
philologist (Janko 2015) could not find a place in an
international journal that covers Mycenaean subjects.
Reading right to left, seal-impression-wise, and by
altering one sign (explained as a scribal aberration!),
Janko arrives at a hypothetical (reconstructed) place-
name in the Linear B archive at Pylos, and constructs
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a tortuous and far-fetched story to get the objects
from Pylos to Bernstorf. It is telling, too, that
Gebhard and Krause are happy to present this as a
plausible explanation.
Not that amber in Bronze Age Germany is
unusual: Christa Stahl (2006) lists many find-
places in Central Europe. Bernstorf, between 1997
and 2005, yielded 56 pieces altogether (some
perforated): the largest quantity from a settlement
in southern Germany (pp. 53 note 134, 138, 272–
73). Incidentally, regarding Tutankhamun’s amber-
looking beads, it was Sinclair Hood (1993)who
first suggested a Tumulus Culture link; the substance
still awaits analysis (Serpico 2000: 451–54; with
Niwi ´
nski (1999) suggesting copal; and with Sarpaki
(2001: 210 note 119, 213 note 150) suggesting
ladanum). Other evidence for long-distance contacts
is summarised in Chapter A8.
The longest chapter, A6, covers various aspects of
ancient gold production and the analysis of gold, and
should be read in conjunction with Chapters B1 and
B2. Part of B1, by Barbara Armbruster, considers the
technical aspects of the Bernstorf gold, concluding
that while the techniques identified exclude the use of
modern tools (as Gebhard in A6 also demonstrates),
they differ from anything known from Bronze Age
Europe. She believes further work is needed, notably
experimental work.
Realistically one must also read the papers by
Pernicka (2014a &b), frequently alluded to, which
present the results of laser ablation ICP-MS analysis.
These results suggested to Pernicka that the Bernstorf
gold is too pure (99.99 per cent) to come from
the Bronze Age (unless achieved by the cementation
process, repeated several times; cementation is not
otherwise known from the period, and the multiple
repetition would serve no obvious purpose); hence
Pernicka argued that it is modern electrolytic gold.
Analyses conducted in Frankfurt (no author stated)
and in Munich by K.T. Fehr and R. Hochleitner,
using electron microprobe analysis, confirm the high
purity, while new XRF analyses conducted in Berlin
by the Federal Office for Materials Research and
Analysis are presented summarily here; a full report
elsewhere (Radtke et al.2016) confirms extreme
purity. Gebhard goes to considerable lengths to
demonstrate that very pure gold (meaning >99.9
per cent gold, not what ore geologists are inclined
to call ‘pure’ gold) can be readily achieved through
simple cementation techniques (in B1 he recounts
an experiment), as shown also in Babylonian texts
(contribution by Paola Paoletti); and that objects
of such pure gold are known from the Bronze Age
world. These are few; one is the coffin of Akhenaten
(KV55), often cited, another the gold disc from
Moordorf in Lower Saxony (the subject of a day
meeting in Hannover in 2016), now itself under
suspicion, although still hard to see as a forgery—but
how then can its gold be so pure? We must wait for
more analyses and more finds with good contexts—
and be prepared for surprises.
We ourselves cannot adjudicate about the gold. The
workmanship is completely atypical for Bronze Age
Europe, but not done with modern instruments. If
the objects are fakes, then the forger was careful to use
convincing tools—but might also have been expected
to use a convincing metal type! If genuine, then either
they are a unique example in Europe, or they come
from elsewhere (e.g. the Eastern Mediterranean) and
were planted. The find circumstances and the amber
(see above) must be taken into account here.
There are further problems. Some of the gold pieces,
and the amber ‘seal’, were enclosed in an ‘envelope’ of
sediment. This sediment is local, analysed by Astrid
Ropke (B4). It contains uncarbonised plant residues,
as do samples of the upper (i.e. recent) soil levels
at the site, but small modern roots can find their
way into older deposits. A mineralised conifer needle
from the envelope of the ‘seal’ was submitted as
part of a mixed sample and produced a date in the
calibrated range AD 1100–1500, but the amount
of material was small and contamination could not
be excluded (p. 120, specialist report pp. 213–14).
Analysis of dark adhesions to the gold (B3) suggests
some modern contamination, perhaps from the
application of fire or heat. A piece of oak stick
found enclosed in one of the gold spirals produced
good radiocarbon dates in the fourteenth century cal
BC (pp. 112–16, 213–14), but as there was much
charcoal around, not least in the burnt rampart, it
could have been intentionally inserted there.
Bernstorf is the largest Bronze Age fortified site north
of the Alps; Krause and his team have done invaluable
fieldwork and we look forward to the definitive
excavation report. Bernstorf was not, however, in
our opinion, the entrepôt for Aegean connections
that he and Gebhard suppose. They try hard to
persuade us that the finds are genuine, attempting
to confirm the long-distance contacts between the
Eastern Mediterranean and Central Europe that
other recent finds increasingly suggest, but they seem
to scramble desperately for arguments, and their
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polemical style does not inspire confidence. Future
discoveries may tell us more; for now we suggest
that archaeologists leave Bernstorf out of debates
about long-distance contacts. It is always possible
to change one’s mind, as has, for example, Kristian
Kristiansen (2016: 165–66 note 1, 170). If one day
your reviewers should need to eat their words, we
shall, and we hope gracefully.
Finally, the site and its finds have an unexpected and
delightful spin-off, a novel for younger readers by
Alix Hänsel (2007; see Hughes-Brock 2011: 107). It
deserves translations.
References
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Hänsel,A. 2007. Das Bernstorf-Orakel—Die Geschichte
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Harding,A. &H. Hughes-Brock. 1974. Amber in
the Mycenaean world. Annual of the British School
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Hood,S. 1993. Amber in Egypt, in C.W. Beck &
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