Armsheim

Armsheim is an Ortsgemeinde – a municipality belonging to a Verbandsgemeinde, a kind of collective municipality – in the Alzey-Worms district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. Armsheim lies in the Rhenish-Hessian Hills, has roughly 2,650 inhabitants and is the third biggest municipality within the Verbandsgemeinde of Wörrstadt, whose seat is in the like-named municipality. The current Armsheim was formed out of two formerly autonomous centres in 1969, named Armsheim and Schimsheim.GeographyLocationArmsheim lies in the middle of Rhenish Hesse, some 14 km from Alzey, 18 km from Bad Kreuznach, 25 km from Bingen and some 30 km southwest of Mainz.HistoryBefore the Christian EraFor 40,000 years there have been people living on the floodplain in the Wiesbach valley, and for 1,500 years, the villages of Armsheim and Schimsheim have stood here. The open land here, scored by brooks, offered Old Stone Age hunter-gatherers ideal living conditions. From the New Stone Age (after 4000 BC), the land was permanently settled. Crop farming and livestock raising underpinned the settlers’ livelihood. Many Neolithic, Bronze Age and Iron Age (specifically from La Tène times) finds show heavy settlement. One of these people’s centres was formed by lands that now make up the new development area. Surface-level witnesses to this early time are the menhirs, of which, however, only one still stands near its original location.