Västra Porten-Smällen cemetery
The burial of Västra Porten Smällen (also smällen burial of Västra Porten Stora called) is a burial site of the Iron Age (500 v. Chr. To 650 n. Chr.) On the eastern and southern slopes of the Moränenhöhe of Hällen in Ytterbytal in the municipality of Kungälv north of Hisingen and Göteborg in Bohuslän in Sweden .
The burial ground is one of the largest in Bohuslän and consists of around 160 monuments. The most common are round and oval stone settings with a diameter of six to eight meters, building stones and 15 mostly small burial mounds . The remains are four up to 13.0 m long ship settlements , a Domarring and a Treudd . Some graves were destroyed in the 19th century. At least two stone settlements were removed in the 1970s. In addition, there seem to be fallen, possibly overgrown building stones. In addition, there were new discoveries through the inventory in the Kungahäll project, which increased the number of monuments.
Seven graves were excavated, most of them before the Gothenburg Exhibition in 1923, when Georg Sarauw (1862–1928) explored six graves on the burial ground. Johan Alin (1878–1944) examined the field in 1925. The grave goods found indicate a higher status of the buried. Horse legs were found in three graves. A bone crest was found in an urn containing the burned bones of a man and a woman and pork bones. Ten bear claws were found in the so-called Bärsärkens grav . Immediately next to the burial ground there are several individual graves, Iron Age settlements and several smaller burial fields. One of the larger ones is in Vena about two kilometers west of Västra Porten - Stora Smällen.
Those buried in the burial ground probably lived nearby. The farms and fields were often on the edge of the valleys. There were probably several farms near Västra Porten - Stora Smällen. In connection with archaeological investigations south of the burial ground, several houses from the Iron Age were found. The largest house is a hall of 40.0 × 9.0 meters from the Viking Age (800-1050 AD).
literature
- Jan Ottander: Blomsholm. 2000 år av traders. Länsstyrelsen i Västra Götalands län, Göteborg 1999, ( Länsstyrelsen Västra Götaland 20, ISSN 1403-168X ).
Web links
- Cemetery of Västra Porten-Smällen - entry in the database "Fornsök" des Riksantikvarieämbetet (Swedish)
- Description (Swedish) and picture
Coordinates: 57 ° 51 '27 " N , 11 ° 54" 42.8 " E