Dolmen in Thrace
The megalithic dolmens in Thrace (also understood here in the sense of the Breton word as “stone tables”) have been known since the 19th century but have hardly been studied. Due to their isolated location - comparable buildings can only be found again in Abkhazia ( Georgia ) on the other side of the Black Sea - and their sometimes poor state of preservation, the dolmens in Thrace only received attention late.
distribution
Only about 25% of the 750 dolmens that were once preserved are located mainly on both sides of the present-day border between Turkey and southeastern Bulgaria , some also in Greece .
Cultural and temporal classification
The pottery found in the context of the dolmens can be assigned to the Ćatalka and Pšeničevo groups of the Tundscha - Mariza area. There is a tendency to date the Thracian dolmens to the Late Bronze Age , more likely to the beginning of the Iron Age (2400–1300 BC). Some of the facilities seem to date back to the 6th century BC. To have been used. None of the more than 600 dolmens contained an intact burial.
In Bulgaria there are two mountains and a cave called Ćatalka (Bulgarian Чаталка). The pottery is named after the cave. Pšeničevo, (bulg. Пшеничево) is located in Stara Zagora Province , municipality of Stara Zagora .
architecture
The capstones of the chambers are only occasionally present. Since only the dolmens of Hljabovo in Bulgaria and Lalapaşa in Turkey were excavated, their typology was limited to the visible characteristics of the building. Due to their chamber dimensions, which are only about 2.5 m in length and width, they belong to the small megalithic systems. They consist of one or two closed one behind the other (as granite also trapezoidal) chambers, whose only south-facing openings consist of so-called soul holes . The shape of this hole is not round or oval as in Central European or horseshoe-shaped as in Sardinian systems, but rectangular. In front of the north-south facing, rectangular or slightly trapezoidal chambers, there is a dromos-like corridor or a broad ante forms a covered antechamber. Side chambers also occur. Despite severe erosion, evidence of a hill surrounding the dolmen with a diameter of up to 30 m was found in most cases. The hill seems to have been flattened like an exedra on the entrance side (e.g. near Hljabovo) .
Bulgaria
Only the mountainous region around Sozopol is littered with several hundred Thracian dolmens. The megalithic complexes in the Bulgarian part of Thrace consist of gneiss and granite . They were far more numerous and are accompanied by rock tombs and menhirs .
As part of the “Strandscha-Sakar” expedition, led by archaeologist Daniela Agra , several dolmens in the Strandscha and Sakar mountains have been examined since the early 2000s . The largest dolmen in Bulgaria, "So Far" (stone egg) was discovered in 2015 near Zlatosel in the Sredna Gora Mountains.
Turkey
The megalithic complexes (56 dolmens are recorded) in the Turkish part of Thrace are concentrated in the regions of Sakar and Strandscha . From 1990 they were mapped and documented. Many of their structural remains are on the terraces of the Strandschagebirge.
Greece
The few dolmens and countless menhirs in the Greek part of the Rhodope Mountains are still completely unexplored.
See also
literature
- Murat Akman: Megalithic Buildings in the Turkish Thrace In: KW Beinhauer (Ed.) Studies on Megalithic - State of Research and Ethnoarchaeological Perspectives 1999 pp. 239–250
- Dirk Paul Mielke: Graves made of granite and gneiss In: Archeology in Germany, issue 1/2007 pp. 58–59
- A. Fol (Ed.): Megalithi Thraciae II [1982]