Das Heiligtum des Jupiter Optimus Maximus auf dem Pfaffenberg/Carnuntum

The hill country of Hainburg, also called Hainburger Pforte, and the plateau to the west to Petronell-Carnuntum and Wildungsmauer are among the most productive research landscapes along the Danube due to their scenic and historical profile. This also applies to the Pfaffenberg, the hill of the Hainburg Hills, which today serves as a quarry and was formerly a temple hill overlooking the Roman city of Carnuntum. Carnuntum, this political, military, economic and cultural hub of Rome at the intersection of the Danube Limes and the Amber Road, needed, in addition to many other urban planning facilities of everyday religious life, a particularly noticeable center of the state cult, which the Roman citizens established at the top of the Pfaffenberg at a height of 320–330m. Jupiter Optimus Maximus, among others protector god of the territorial borders and guarantor of political contracts, the Capitoline triad (Jupiter, Juno, Minerva), the divinity of the ruler and other numina of the state religion were the focus of worship activities up there. Although it has always been known, it was not until the late 1960s that systematic area excavations were initiated by Hermann Vetters, with which the ruins of this large temple area were uncovered and researched before its destruction by the eradicating Pfaffenberg quarry and the remaining cult inventory could be rescued and evacuated. An originally planned control-excavation resulted in long-term rescue excavations, some of which took a dramatic course, and the results of which are presented and discussed in detail in this work.