Aesch

Geschichte

Aesch is a village and a municipality in the canton of Basel-Landschaft, Switzerland. Almost all of its area is located on the left, western bank of the Birs and is a suburb of Basel.The Neolithic gravesite in the Gmeiniwald is listed as a heritage site of national significance.The official language of Aesch is German, but the main spoken language is the local variant of the Alemannic Swiss German dialect.HistoryAesch is first mentioned in 1252 as Esch.Prehistoric AeschThe area around Aesch was inhabited as far back as the Upper Paleolithic, as the graves at Gmeiniwald show. The Dolmen graves of the A-Schwörstadt type date from about the 3rd millennium BC. Gmeiniwald was discovered in 1907, and excavated in 1907 and again in 1909. A central, rectangular grave chamber of 2.4x was found under a shallow mound of about 9m in diameter. The grave contained the skeletal remains of 47 individuals, including 14 children, as well as evidence of cremation burials. The grave also contained arrows, spears and flint knives, animal tooth pendants, a mallet made of red sandstone and quartzite, and pottery fragments.