Bell-cup grave from Wallhöfen

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The bell-cup grave of Wallhöfen , a district of Vollersode in the combined municipality of Hambergen , is located on the Geest heights of the Teufelsmoor north of Bremen in the Elbe-Weser triangle in Lower Saxony .

In the settlement area , which has been preferred since the Stone Age , there were still more than 40 hill and five large stone graves as well as several urn cemeteries at the beginning of the 20th century . Four barrows were excavated during the construction of a sports center. The grave mound No. 70 is of particular scientific importance.

The hill

The hill had a diameter of 15 m and a remaining height of about one meter. In the recently disturbed, upper layers urn fragments , the handle end of a flint dagger , fragments of a bronze spiral arm and corpse burn came to light. In deeper layers, a stone setting , which also included a halved millstone , indicated further finds. Below were fragments of an incomplete so-called giant beaker , the height of which was 25 to 28 cm and a base diameter of around eight centimeters could be reconstructed. A lower-lying hill surface showed the remains of a somewhat non-circular stone wreath, of which mostly only the footprints were found. In the stone wreath, southeast of the center, was a large boulder together with a flat stone slab in situ . The upright stone has a smooth side, which also faced the center of the hill, as did the flat stone slab in front of it, on which and in the vicinity of which charcoal tinsel lay. In the same planum, a trench filling could be seen that was not concentric to the stone circle, but was shifted about a meter to the east and had the shape of a spiral with one and a half turns in the plan . The outer contour of the spiral trench was an oval, the larger axis of which was oriented east-west.

In the western focal point of the trench oval, another, but much smaller oval trench filling emerges. The associated trench had an average width of 0.5 m. The eastern arch of the trench was covered with nine stones about the size of a head, which did not reach the bottom, but lay at different depths. The finding indicated a shaft grave of the single grave culture, the outlines of which became clear in the deeper subgrade. The base of the oval grave was 1.5 by 1.0 m. A vessel rim was visible 60 cm below ground level, which turned out to be an intact upright bell-shaped beaker. The other additions consisted of an arrowhead and a flint blade scraper .

The bell beaker

Comparison picture: Bell beaker from Goch

The completely preserved beaker of the bell beaker culture has a compact S-profile, without a floor recess, with a width of 14.3 cm near the lower quarter. Its mouth diameter is 15 cm. It has a height of 19.6 cm and a footprint of 7.7 cm. The light brown-reddish surface is almost polished. The clay is finely muddy and leaned, red in the break with a light gray central stripe. The decor shows an alternation of decorated and undecorated horizontally surrounding areas. The five, roughly evenly distributed, two-dimensionally filled decorative strips have slightly different widths. The lowest and uppermost decorative strips have a smaller distance to the standing surface or the mouth of the vessel. The four upper decorative strips are filled with an alternating herringbone pattern. The lower stripe has simple diagonal hatching. The decorative stripes are framed by double or single stamp lines. Lines and patterns were imprinted with a presumably three-pronged tooth stick or comb stamp.

The giant mug

Comparison picture: Giant mug from Gütersloh - Pavenstädt

Giant beakers and their fragments occasionally appear in north German barrows. However, they are often in places that do not allow a stratigraphic classification. In the present case it is the partial laying down of a giant mug. The stratigraphic location shows that the giant beaker belongs to the bell beaker burial. The same people who carried out the burial also "deposited" the giant cup fragments over the stone grave in the course of the pile-up of the mound. This means that the giant and bell beakers must have been in use at the same time.

context

This type of cup is represented several times in northern Germany and the Netherlands . It can be connected to the typology of Willem Glasbergen and JD van der Waals and it belongs to the bell beakers with "beginning zone contraction" of type 2. The triangular arrowhead has none in the association of a closed grave find in Lower Saxony, but one in the Netherlands Parallel. Blade scratches occasionally appear in the inventory of bell-cup burials. In northern Lower Saxony, however, they are more characteristic than the addition of the individual grave culture. The east-west oriented shaft grave also corresponds to the convention of the individual grave culture. But in the Netherlands and in the district of Goslar on the northern Harz , bell-cup graves are often oriented in this way. Since no skeletal remains or other traces of the buried person could be found in Wallhöfen, the location of the additions had to be taken into account for keeping and aligning the dead. It speaks for a stool on the left side with the head to the east and the line of sight to the south. The arrowhead shows the burial as a man's grave.

The orientation and alignment of the grave do not necessarily have to be borrowed from the individual grave culture. On the other hand, the oval shape of the shaft, the oval spiral of the circular moat and the hilltop over the complex are allowed to represent elements that were adopted by the bearers of the individual grave culture.

literature

Coordinates: 53 ° 19 ′ 20.8 "  N , 8 ° 50 ′ 18.8"  E