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Seven boards line the path to the barrows of
Schandorf. The path leads to the Iron Age graveyard lying in the Schandorf forest. This burial ground consists of
impressive burial mounds up to 16m high. Most of the barrows date from the Hallstatt period around 750 BC, others
from the elder Roman Iron Age.
 The area around
Schandorf was one of the first populated areas in southern Burgenland. Around 750 BC, the region was booming due
to the mining and smelting of iron ore south of Schandorf. The then powerful iron princes of the Hallstatt period
were based at the loop of the Pinka river in Burg. The local earth castle consisted of a plateau of approximately
600m x 250m and offered natural protection against invading enemies. Through the iron melting the "Iron Barons"
became very rich and powerful. They buried their dead in several graveyards in the hills to the south, southeast
and east of the castle. More than two hundred huge mounds were created as lasting memorial monuments for the
dead in what is now the Schandorf forest.
 Inside Hill 41, which
was excavated at the southern end of Group I in 1933, a stone packing and a grave chamber of huge stone slabs was
found. The finds - two needles with more than one pin head, conical neck vessels with black-red paintings and
figural attachments, a bronze vessel, and iron tools - suggest that it was a man's grave. The black-red painting
on a conical neck vessel also shows a stylized illustration of a man with a wide-brimmed hat, that was typical for
festive costumes.
In the Elder Iron Age (Hallstatt culture) from the 8th century BC onwards there was a significant economic boom in
the region of Schandorf-Burg-Eisenberg. The peasants of that time increasingly specialized in the production of
the sought-after and expensive metal iron. While at first the iron was only used for jewelry and arms, with the
spreading of new technology, the new raw material was generally used for the production of tools of all kind.
 In the forests of
the districts of Oberpullendorf and Oberwart about 20,000 glory holes and 1,200 slag places each with 3 to 10
smelting furnaces, mostly dating from the late La Tène period, are today's evidence of iron mining in central
Burgenland. The most common type is a 1 meter wide, originally nearly 1.5 meters high sunken cupola furnace with
an attached work pit. This type of furnace is known as the "Noric smelting furnace, type Burgenland" named such
due to the location where it was typically found.
The dead were burned in their festive costumes in funeral pyres. The ashes of the dead were buried in burial
chambers together with pottery vessels, which contained food and drink for the netherworld, the burned costume and
arms, tools and jewelry. Above these chambers, in weeks of work, the relatives of the deceased often piled up
mounds of earth as memorial monuments.
 So far there are five
barrow fields of the Hallstatt culture known in this region with a total of 285 burial mounds. The smallest group
with 30 hills is in Badersdorf, a larger group of 84 hills at Eisenberg in the municipal areas of Burg and
Felsöcsatár. The largest number of Hallstatt burial mounds in this region is located in Schandorf forest, divided
into three groups of 150 (Group 1), 11 (Group 2) and 9 hills (Group 4). The 73 lower hills of the groups 3 and 5
are not of the Hallstatt type, they were built in the earlier Roman Iron Age. The burial mounds are round and have
relatively steep slopes. At the foot of many of these mounds are circular ditches, still visible today, from where
the earth was taken to build the mound.
Earth bridges can also be found across the ditches. Most of the hills are higher than 10 meters, the biggest ones
are up to 16m high with a diameter of 35 to 40 meters.
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