3.2 Midlaren-De Bloemert
Midlaren-De Bloemert is located c. 25 km from Ezinge in the Pleistocene sand area of northern Drenthe. The pottery assemblage of this settlement was studied by the author (Nieuwhof 2008a), making the results easily comparable to those from Ezinge. Moreover, apart from the fabrics, the pottery from this area strongly resembles the pottery of the Groningen terp region (Taayke 1996, II; III).
Midlaren-De Bloemert was excavated in 1969 and between 2003 and 2005 (Nicolay 2008a). The settlement was excavated almost complete, an area of 4.8 ha, in one level. It was a small settlement, with only one house at a time in the middle and late pre-Roman Iron Age, growing to two or three houses at most in the Roman Iron Age and diminishing to only one house per generation from the 4th century onwards (Nicolay 2008b, 215). In the vicinity, two small cemeteries with graves from the Migration Period, possibly belonging to this settlement, were found. The first was already discovered in 1856. The other was excavated as part of the settlement excavation (Tuin 2008).
The finds of handmade pottery from the settlement comprise 54.000 sherds (717 kg) from all occupation periods between the middle pre-Roman Iron Age and the late Middle Ages. This number includes a very small number of pots from the cemetery excavated by Tuin (2008). The cremation urns that were found in the second nearby cemetery (figs. 12 and 13) have previously been published by Pleyte (1882, 49-51, Pl. LVII and LVIII), by Tischler (1956, Abb. 43 and 44) and recently by Lanting & Van der Plicht (2010, 142-143).