Hitzacker Archaeological Centre

The Hitzacker Archaeological Centre is an archaeological open-air museum in Hitzacker in the German state of Lower Saxony [1]. The core theme of the museum is the presentation of Bronze Age settlements [1]. The museum has three reconstructed single-room houses or longhouses that combine livestock stalls and living accommodation under one roof, a burial hut and a pit-house, as they would have looked based on local archaeological finds [1]. One of the longhouses contains an exhibition of the important aspects of life in the Bronze Age some 3,000 years ago [1]. In 1969 the first archaeological discoveries of ceramic shards and building floor plans were made during building work at Lake Hitzacker [1]. Not until 1987 were planned archaeological digs carried out on the area, because the expansion of the lake and upgrade of a federal road endangered the cultural monuments [1]. The following years yielded further finds and floor plans [1]. In 1990 the Hitzacker Archaeological Centre was founded due to the importance of these discoveries [1].