Great stone graves near Brüsewitz

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The megalithic graves near Brüsewitz were two or three megalithic graves of the Neolithic funnel cup culture near Brüsewitz in the district of Northwest Mecklenburg ( Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania ). They were destroyed in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Research history

Grave 2 was examined for the first time in 1762 and again in 1779 by Carl Friedrich Evers . The finds he made were published in 1837 and 1840 by Georg Christian Friedrich Lisch . Lisch himself examined graves 1 and 3 on May 3, 1839, which together with a neighboring burial mound had to give way to road construction. Lisch considered the grave examined by Evers to be identical to grave 3, but Robert Beltz and, following him, Ewald Schuldt and Hans-Jürgen Beier thought they were different graves.

There are different numbers. In the following, the system from Schuldt is used.

Lisch Beltz Sprockhoff Schuldt / Beier
1 2 1 1
2 1 - 2
3 2 3

location

According to Lisch, graves 1 and 3 were "[a] uf the field mark of the Brüsewitz estate [...] near the Eulenkruge, on the road between Schwerin and Gadebusch". Grave 1 was "close to the south-west behind the Eulenkruge, not far from the edge of the wood on the way to Haidekaten" and grave 3 "A few hundred paces from this grave is in the wood on the other side of the path". All that is known about grave 2 is that it was “zu Kleinen-Brütz” (old name von Brüsewitz).

description

Grave 1

The “Resengrav” (giant grave) designated grave 1 was an east-west oriented chamberless barn bed with a length of about 100 feet (31 m) and a width between 12 and 14 feet (4.3-4.8) m). It had a double stone enclosure, from the still 36 Granite - boulders with a Height between 3 and 5 feet (about 0.9 to 1.6 m) were obtained. The gaps between the boulders were filled with dry stone masonry made of small stones. The mound was 4 feet (1.2 m) high. The western half of the hill was divided lengthways by a wall made of small stones. This area of ​​the complex was largely empty, only a ceramic shard was found here. In the eastern half of the hill the earth was interspersed with burnt and unburned flint pieces, charcoal , red sandstone slabs and thick-walled ceramic shards. It is said that an ax and a flint blade were found between the stones, but the workers smashed them and did not keep them. Two pieces of iron were also found just under the sward of the hill, probably from a knife or sword from Slavic or more recent times.

Grave 2

No details are available about the grave itself. In 1762 five flint axes were found here, in 1779 a grindstone made of red sandstone, which initially came into the possession of the University of Rostock and in 1839 was transferred to the Grand Ducal Antiquities Collection in Schwerin , today's Archaeological State Museum Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania .

Grave 3

Grave 3 was already badly destroyed when Lisch examined it. A pile of hills could not be determined. The wall stones of the burial chamber were still preserved, the cap stones had already been removed, only a fragment of a cap stone was still inside the chamber. The orientation of the chamber is not recorded. Since there is no information about their dimensions or the number of wall stones, the exact type of grave can no longer be determined.

The graves in regional sagas

It was said about the giant grave that lights should be on at night.

literature

  • Hans-Jürgen Beier : The megalithic, submegalithic and pseudomegalithic buildings as well as the menhirs between the Baltic Sea and the Thuringian Forest. Contributions to the prehistory and early history of Central Europe 1. Wilkau-Haßlau 1991, p. 22.
  • Robert Beltz : The Stone Age sites in Meklenburg. In: Yearbook of the Association for Mecklenburg History and Archeology. Volume 64, 1899, p. 100 ( online ).
  • Georg Christian Friedrich Lisch : Friderico-Francisceum or grand-ducal antiquities collection from the old Germanic and Slavic times of Mecklenburg. Breitkopf and Härtel, Leipzig 1837, p. 77 ( online ).
  • Georg Christian Friedrich Lisch: megalithic graves of Brüsewitz. In: Yearbook of the Association for Mecklenburg History and Archeology. Volume 4, 1839, pp. 22-23 ( online ).
  • Georg Christian Friedrich Lisch: megalithic grave of Brüsewitz. In: Yearbook of the Association for Mecklenburg History and Archeology. Volume 5, 1840, p. 102 ( online ).
  • Ewald Schuldt : The Mecklenburg megalithic graves. Research on their architecture and function. VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1972, p. 130.
  • Ernst Sprockhoff : Atlas of the megalithic tombs of Germany. Part 2: Mecklenburg - Brandenburg - Pomerania. Rudolf-Habelt Verlag, Bonn 1967, p. 35.