the other hand, it seems likely that there were people living in what is now Kelsterbach in the Bronze Age. The first finds of value from this time were made as early as 1937. Then, in 1972, as work was under way to build the Kelsterbacher Spange – a railway connection – at the edge of the Kelsterbach Terrace between Römerschneise and Schwedenschanze, several sets of Bronze Age finds were brought up. All the archaeological analysis considered as a whole has yielded the assumption that there was a Middle to Late Bronze Age settlement some 10 to 15 m above the Main. From the early Iron Age (700–450 BC), there are likely various traces of settlement to be found. The Romans Earlier finds gave cause to suppose that there had been a Roman settlement in the third century in the Kelsterbach Lowland. In 1970, bits of tile and coins found in the northeast part of the municipal area were enough to prompt extensive digs in 2004 and 2005 by the Goethe University's Institute for Archaeological Sciences. Brought to light in these digs was a building with a fountain, along with many incidental finds. It has been called Kleinvilla ("Small Villa"), and it is believed to date from 200 to 220 AD. Middle Ages Owing to the town's name, it is believed to have been founded by the Franks as Gelsterbach (gelster = loudly rushing). It hardly seems likely that the scanty trickle of a rill that rises in the Frankfurt City Forest and flows through the town now could be Kelsterbach's namesake, even if in ages gone by its flow was considerably greater. Kelsterbach's first documentary mention, as Gelsterbach, came, as it did for countless other places in Germany, in the Lorsch codex (about 850). For many centuries, Kelsterbach belonged to the Dreieich royal hunting woods, whose central authority lay at Hayn Castle (now a ruin at Dreieichenhayn, a constituent community of Dreieich). The kingly hunting rights were upheld even through the transfer of power to the County of Katzenelnbogen. In 1479, Kelsterbach along with the whole County of Katzenelnbogen passed to the Landgraviate of Hesse, and through division of inheritance in 1567, to Hesse-Darmstadt, whose history was shared thereafter by this rather insignificant farming village. Modern times Landgrave Ernst-Ludwig planned to use Kelsterbach's advantageous location for transport to expand the village into a town of craftsmen, to which end