Holthausen burial mound

The grave mounds of Holthausen are located near the allotment garden complex Salzweg on the Billes Kopf in Holthausen , Hattingen , south of the Ruhr . The Röhr-Hof (Bille) used to stand here. The hills presumably date back to the Neolithic Age .

The hills became known to the public in 1937. In the Westfälische Landeszeitung - Rote Erde of July 2, 1937, it was stated: “Only a few people should have known that (in Holthausen) on the foothills of a ridge there is the richest prehistoric burial ground in our wider area. The large complex of this cult site indicates the extraordinary importance of this place with certainty and testifies to the settlement of the communities of Welper and Holthausen, which dates back to ancient times. "

The Sprockhöveler Zeitung wrote on July 12, 1937: “The stone burial ground in Holthausen is also shrouded in apparently impenetrable secrets for the time being. Some time ago a farmer made the discovery that he had an apparently inexhaustible field of immediately usable stones there on the Holthauser ridge, from where one has a wide view of the Ruhr valley. When he finally found that the stones were layered in a special and peculiar way, he announced his observations. And then it was discovered that they were so-called stone boxes , i.e. stone graves of our ancestors. In fact, this is probably a large burial ground, which, as we can still determine from writings, was laid out on an early mark belonging to the general public in Welper-Holthausen. The head of the nursing home for Germanic prehistory in Munster has declared that it is the best preserved and probably the largest stone burial ground in the industrial area. One could clearly see an enclosing wall around the stone burial ground. Strangely enough, the trenches converge towards the top. "

During a site inspection on April 16, 1957, 26 burial mounds with a diameter between 3 and 8 meters and a height of 60 to 110 centimeters were documented.

Heinrich Eversberg made a cut through a hill in 1957; During a second excavation in 1959, students from the Waldstrasse grammar school removed half of a hill without finding anything.

In 1988, 20 suspected sites were identified. In 1988 it was suggested that it be included in the list of monuments of the city of Hattingen , but it was not implemented.