Large stone graves near Dörmte
The megalithic graves near Dörmte were three megalithic graves of the Neolithic funnel beaker culture near Dörmte , a district of Oetzen in the Uelzen district ( Lower Saxony ). They were destroyed in the 19th century. The three systems were documented in the 1840s by Georg Otto Carl von Estorff . He made a drawing of grave 3. Grave 1 was described by him in such detail that Ernst Sprockhoff was able to make a reconstruction drawing; This grave is listed under the number 792 in his atlas of Germany's megalithic tombs .
location
Graves 1 and 2 were west of Dörmte. They are connected to the large stone graves near Oetzen, which were also destroyed in the 19th century and arranged in a row running from southwest to northeast. Grave 3 was north-east of Dörmte on the border with the Bruchwedel field marrow. A little further to the north-west were the two large stone graves near Bruchwedel .
description
Grave 1
Grave 1 was still well preserved when von Estorff took it. It had an oak- framed, east-west oriented rectangular barren bed with a length of 13 m and a width of 9 m. The enclosure was almost complete and all the stones were probably still in place , only a few stones were missing on the western narrow side. Only the two corner stones and one other stone were preserved. The eastern narrow side had five wall stones, of which the two corner stones were significantly larger than the three middle ones. The southern cornerstone was 10 feet long , 4 feet wide, and 7 feet high. The northern corner stone was 10 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 5 feet high. The three middle stones were between 5 and 6 feet (about 1.45-1.75 m) thick and between 4 and 6 feet (about 1.15-1.75 m) high.
The burial chamber was a little slanted in the bed. It had six pairs of wall stones on the long sides and originally five or six cap stones. The pile of mounds reached just below the capstones. Of these, four were still lying on the stones of the wall, a fifth was a bit dragged, but still within the giant bed. The second capstone from the west had a flat top, which was covered with 30 bowls . The chamber was probably a large dolmen .
Grave 2
Grave 2 had an east-west oriented barren bed with a length of almost 40 m and a width of 6 m. When von Estorff documented it in 1840, its destruction had already begun. Of the enclosure there were only four stones left on the western narrow side and one stone on the eastern narrow side as well as eight stones on the southern and three intact and two broken stones on the northern long side. The burial chamber was a little east of the center. It was also oriented east-west and had a length of 4.7 m and a width of 1.75 m. Three wall stones on the southern long side and two wall stones on the eastern narrow side were still preserved. The capstone was blown. The exact type of grave can no longer be determined.
Grave 3
Tomb 3 originally had a barren bed 24 paces long and 24 feet wide. This had already been removed before Estorff's admission. The still preserved burial chamber was oriented east-west and had a length of 30 feet (approx. 8.8 m) and a width of 6 feet (approx. 1.75 m). It consisted of nine wall stones on which a single large capstone over 10 feet in diameter rested. Its surface was flat and provided with about six bowls.
literature
- Georg Otto Carl von Estorff : Pagan antiquities of the area of Uelzen in the former Bardengaue (Kingdom of Hanover). Hahn'sche Hof bookstore, Hanover 1846.
- Johannes Heinrich Müller , Jacobus Reimers : Pre and early historical antiquities of the province of Hanover. Schulze, Hannover 1893, p. 86 ( PDF; 25.0 MB ).
- Ernst Sprockhoff : Atlas of the megalithic tombs of Germany. Part 3: Lower Saxony - Westphalia. Rudolf-Habelt Verlag, Bonn 1975, ISBN 3-7749-1326-9 , p. 70.
