New Early Iron Age finds from Zagorje ob Savi and Sava near Litija (Slovenia)

Zagorje ob Savi has been known as an archaeological site for more than a century, ever since burials from the Early Iron Age were unearthed there by chance towards the end of the 19th century. The rescue archaeological investigations conducted in 2011 brought new evidence on the site and its significance. Nine inhumation burials were excavated, two of which belonged to children, two to women and five to men. Two of the burials stand out in their goods, one containing a bronze belt set and the other, with a well-preserved female skeleton, containing amber beads, a bronze hair ring, serpentine fibula and beaker. Other finds from the site indicate that a settlement stood here before the cemetery and was inhabited in the Late Bronze and/or beginning of the Early Iron Age. At Sava near Litija (west of Zagorjc ob Savi), the finds of a fibula and spearhead further advance our knowledge of the practice of flat inhumation burial that became the norm towards the end of the Hallstatt period in the Zasavje region.