A staircase makes history

An archaeological sensation

Scientists at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, have dated the oldest wooden staircase in Europe using the method of dendrochronology. The date - 1344 BC - is a scientific sensation. At 3349 years, this unique find is much older than initially assumed. The perfectly preserved staircase was discovered by archaeologists from the Natural History Museum Vienna in the salt mine of Hallstatt / Upper Austria. The site is located in the middle of a Bronze Age salt mining area. For the scientists, it was clear from the beginning that an old age was to be assumed. However, the dating to 1344 BC exceeds expectations by more than 200 years.

The staircase from the salt mine is the oldest European evidence of timbered wooden stairs. The head of the archaeological excavations in the Hallstatt salt mine, Hans Reschreiter, is enthusiastic: "After the excavation, the staircase makes such an intact impression as if miners had walked over it for the last time only yesterday. We have already uncovered over six meters of the staircase so far. How long it will ultimately be cannot be said today."

The staircase was discovered in the Christian von Tusch factory

The site is the lower end of a collapsed shaft from the 14th century BC. From this shaft, the Bronze Age miners followed the rock salt in a horizontal direction. The staircase was built in a large hall (the dimensions of which cannot yet be estimated) on a thick layer of overburden. It seems as if this was levelled before the start of the construction work in order to have a suitable substrate for the following work steps. The drive, as a staircase is called in mining, consists of two trunks with a diameter of 20-35 cm, the stringers, which were laid parallel to each other at a distance of 1.20 m. In the 6 cm wide and 8 cm deep longitudinal groove of these two side parts, treads and spacers were then alternately pushed. Both the treads and the spacer boards are tangentially split by trunks with a diameter of about 16-25 cm. If the spacer boards were too thick to fit into the groove, they were chopped up on the forest edge side. The treads are attached to the groove with a square tenon. To prevent the two stringers from slipping apart, they are secured with a "lock" and driven posts. All parts of the trip examined so far are made of spruces, firs and a few copper beeches.

The tread width of the staircase is over 1 m, much larger than is known today from so-called mining stairs. This can be explained by the fact that several people were transporting at the same time in "two-way traffic", or that very heavy loads (scaffolding, salt plates) had to be transported, which could only be carried by several people walking side by side. Nothing can be said about the length of the staircase for the time being. It is still "stuck" in the mountain both above and below. If the theory is correct that it leads to the shaft, we have to reckon with a length of a little more than 10 m at the top.

At the moment, only assumptions can be made on the downside. In the extension of the staircase downwards, there are no operating facilities from modern mining for the next 80 m and therefore no archaeological outcrops that could provide clues. Since the construction of the trip is both time-consuming and material-intensive, we assume that this effort was probably not made to connect a mine located only 15 m from the shaft to it. Rather, we are thinking of a dozens of meters long main connecting route with an extensive, somewhat deeper mining.

Climbing aid from the Bronze Age

Since there is an extension of the cheeks by spaulding in the section of the ride, which is only a few meters long and has been uncovered so far, the technical prerequisite for this consideration is met. The black "covering" on the steps, which is several centimetres thick, testifies to longer use. This consists of a few burnt pine shavings and compacted charcoal flakes, such as those produced when pine shavings burn down. Finds of staircase parts (stringers and steps) in other areas of the Christian Tusch Factory (Barth 2003/2) and at two other places on the mountain clearly prove that the now uncovered ride is not an isolated case, but a common climbing aid of the Bronze Age.

It seems likely that the individual parts of the voyage were manufactured in series production above ground and then assembled in the pit according to the requirements. The treads are then wedged between the two adjacent spacer boards and fixed in their position. Since the humidity in the pit is constantly high, the construction cannot dry out and become loose.

The gradient of the ride changes from 30 to 15 degrees in the part that has been exposed so far. To what extent this corresponds to the original state or is due to the movement of the mountain cannot yet be said. The inclination of the treads rather suggests that it was originally built steeper - with a 30-degree incline. The step spacing and thus also the tread height are not uniform. The distance varies between 20 and 30 cm.

In any case, the trip is to be seen as further proof that already in the Bronze Age there was a well-organized huge operation on the Hallstatt Salzberg, which does not need to shy away from comparison with the Hallstatt period operating facilities (Barth 2003/1; Barth & Lobisser 2002). What is the special significance of the staircase? Despite the excellent conservation conditions in the salt mine, we rarely come across complete in situ wooden structures. In general, we only recover equipment from operational waste that has been left unusable. The perfect execution of the staircase shows once again the high technical standards we can expect in the Bronze Age. Since there are no comparable finds, it remains to be seen whether "our" trip is a custom-made vehicle for mining, or whether it is the only surviving evidence of a common construction.
Dendrochronology - The Science of the Age of Wood

There are several scientific methods to determine the age of an ancient object. The best known is the radiocarbon/C14 method, the most accurate is dendrochronology. Dendrochronology can undoubtedly determine the age of a wooden object to a calendar year. In doing so, the scientists take advantage of the fact that a living tree forms a complete cell envelope - an annual ring - every year and reacts to environmental factors. In bad years, e.g. when the weather is unfavourable, a narrow annual ring is formed. In good years, exactly the opposite is the case. The sequence of tree rings that a tree forms throughout its life is very characteristic. To date a single object from the Bronze Age, it is necessary to attach tree-ring sequences from over three millennia to each other in a seamless chain, i.e. to build up a reference curve.

The starting point of this curve are trees of our present. The tree-ring sequence of the piece to be dated must be compared exactly with the reference curve in order to determine its exact position on the curve and thus its age. To date the staircase, a separate reference curve of spruce and fir woods was built, which goes back 3500 years, as the reference curves for the Hallstatt area that existed up to this point in time are largely invalid.

The dating of the staircase

The first step was the diving of the Black Lake at the north-east slope of the Dachstein in 1999. With the support of the Austrian Armed Forces, more than 200 subfossil tree trunks, i.e. tree trunks preserved in the water of the lake, were successfully sampled. With these samples, a 3475-year-long chronology of spruce and larch trees could be built. In 2004, further subfossil tree trunks were excavated and sampled in a bog, the Karmoos in Hallstatt.

More than 300 wood samples were recovered. On the basis of these woods, a pure spruce chronology could be built up until 1498 BC. So far, 550 wood samples have been taken from the "Alter Grubenoffen, Christian-Tusch-Werk" area, the type of wood has been determined, and the tree ring widths have been measured. The staircase itself contributed 18 samples. The 18 samples of the staircase are also part of a 282-year-long center curve. All the trees used to build the staircase were felled in the same year.

The Christian-Tusch-Werk middle curve could be clearly dated to the middle curve built on the Dachstein and in Hallstatt: The end date of this middle curve is 1245 BC. This results in the felling year of the trees used for the staircase from 1344 BC.

History of research

In the beginning, the main focus of the research was on being able to classify the many known sites in the mountain more precisely. It soon turned out that salt mining began long before the world-famous burial ground of the early Iron Age (approx. 800 - 350 BC) in the high valley. The dimension of the prehistoric tunnels also eclipsed everything previously known and expected. In the Late Bronze Age, rock salt was followed with immense shafts at depths of well over a hundred meters. During the Hallstatt period, the mining technique was fundamentally changed and huge horizontal caverns were created to follow the core strike.

One of these halls has been explored more intensively in recent decades and has an incredible length of over 170 m in length with a cross-section of 20 m high and 10 - 20 m wide. The research of the last few years shows more and more clearly that we have had a well-organized, huge mining industrial operation on the Hallstatt Salzberg since the 14th century BC at the latest - although the beginning of salt production can be dated back over 7000 years.

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