Laténium

47.007646.972152Koordinaten: 47 ° 0 ' 27.5 "N, 6 ° 58' 19.7 " E; CH1903: 564526/206394

The Laténium is the cantonal archaeological museum in the Swiss canton of Neuchâtel. It is named after the locality La Tène on Lake Neuchâtel and sits on the shore in Hauterive.

History

Opened in 2001, Laténium is surrounded by an archaeological park. The total land area of 2.5 hectares was until 1980 under the lake water levels and was known as the archaeological site. From 1984 to 1986, this site was drained by means of a polder and fully excavated. The rich reference " Champréveyres » spawned remains of settlements from the Late Bronze Age and the Neolithic period as well as a storage site early Stone Age hunters in several layers. Numerous archaeological finds were also entered in the construction of the A5 motorway to days and even earlier in the second Jura water correction. Therefore, the Cantonal Museum in Neuchâtel had become too small and a new building was built on the fully researched excavation site. In the same building including the Institute of Prehistory and Early History of the University of Neuchâtel is housed.

Museum Didactics

In the modern building about 3,000 artifacts from the Stone Age are exhibited to the Middle Ages to 2200 m². The exhibition is didactically designed so that you can from today goes on and on in the past. So the visitors are at the beginning the people of the 20th century with a Swiss Army knife over and meet by and by the Cro -Magnon people with flint blades, the Neanderthals and Homo erectus with their stone tools to Homo habilis with a chopper. The following are the Australopithecus robustus and tool-free africanus. Based on the exhibits from the corresponding epochs culture techniques and their development can be traced.

Archaeological Park

The park surrounding the museum on the lake is accessible and at the same time offers recreation room as well as reconstructions of settlement types and habitats of the region from the last 15,000 years. These include selected plant, a Bronze Age lake-dwelling, a Celtic Bridge, a dugout and a Gallo- Roman barge. The Laténium organized in the park demonstrations of old crafts and performs tests of experimental archeology through.

Collections

In addition to the permanent exhibition, the Laténium houses extensive collections with nearly 500,000 artifacts in its depots. Parts of which are housed in the visitable Depot in glass shelves for scientists and - have easy access visitors - on open days. The focus is on regional archeology finds from the canton. These donations come from collectors from the region, brought in the Mycenaean finds, glass from Palestine, finds from Greece, Italy and Russia.

For the conservation and restoration of archaeological finds the Laténium maintains its own laboratory, which is equipped with modern appliances for the treatment of organic materials, metals, ceramics and glass.