Siegburg Area before 1064 @museum.de

M: We don’t know much about the early days of human settlement in Siegburg.

F: However, based on finds from the Siegburg area, it seems highly likely that human beings have lived here since around 80,000 BC at the latest – that’s the late Palaeolithic. In the display case, we show, for example, blade scrapers from this period, which were used to remove hair and flesh from animal skins.

M: In the Neolithic period – roughly between 5,000 and 2,000 BC – people gradually became permanently settled. They lived as farmers, kept animals and had fields where they grew crops. Polished tools with a hole drilled for the shaft, such as the stone axe on show here, bear witness to new craft skills – as does the pottery.

F: Evidence of the Bronze and Iron Ages – from around 2,000 BC onwards – includes urns with supplementary vessels from Siegburg and the Rhine-Sieg district and a spearhead, and fragments of an iron axe from the town of Sankt Augustin, less than six kilometres (or three and a half miles) away.

M: Roman finds are thin on the ground in Siegburg. The Rhine, with the Roman camp in Bonn, was part of the Roman frontier. Although the Romans traded here, in the foothills on the eastern bank of the Rhine, they left no permanent structures.

F: Next, we're going to take a leap forward in time to the Middle Ages – and head down into the underground vault for the purpose.