Great stone graves near Hammah

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Great stone graves near Hammah
The great stone tomb Hammah 1

The great stone tomb Hammah 1
Great stone graves near Hammah (Lower Saxony)
Red pog.svg
Coordinates 53 ° 38 '1.8 "  N , 9 ° 22' 20.3"  E Coordinates: 53 ° 38 '1.8 "  N , 9 ° 22' 20.3"  E
place Hammah , Lower Saxony , Germany
Emergence 3500 to 2800 BC Chr.
Sprockhoff no. 652-655

The large stone graves at Hammah are four between 3500 and 2800 BC. Resulting Chr. Megalithic the Neolithic Funnel Beaker Culture (TBK) near the village Hammah in the district Stade in Lower Saxony . They have the Sprockhoff numbers 652–655. Graves 1–3 were scientifically examined in 1921 by Karl Hermann Jacob-Friesen (1886–1960).

location

The four large stone graves are located in the area of ​​the municipality of Hammah in the Elbe-Weser triangle in Lower Saxony in a former moor, which belongs to the combined community of Oldendorf-Himmelpforten . During the drainage and cultivation of the moor during the First World War, the stones of several graves unexpectedly came to light, which had originally been erected on a flat, sandy hilltop on which the formation of upland moor did not begin until later. The four tombs are part of a larger necropolis that stretches northeast of Hammah in the line running from northwest to southeast. A total of 15 tombs were found here, nine of which are non-megalithic.

Grave 1 is located near the Groß Sterneberg district, which belongs to Hammah, immediately to the east on the Bahnhofstrasse that connects the two towns. 1.1 km east-southeast of this are graves 2 and 3 at the southeast end of the necropolis. They are only 20 m apart in a north-south direction. There are also two burial mounds at this point . Grave 4 is about halfway between grave 1 and graves 2 and 3.

description

Grave 1

Grave 1

The submerged system consists of the ten completely preserved wall stones with the associated intermediate lining made of dry masonry and three large cap stones. The wall stones were embedded in fine-grain sand in a rectangular pit. Outside they were supported with a pack of chipped granites and pebbles. With a width of two meters and a depth of 2.25 meters, measured from the top of the central capstone, the pack is extraordinarily powerful. The chamber floor is paved with larger attachments. An entrance with flanking stones is missing, so that it is a variant of the passage grave, which either never had an entrance, or only a wooden one, hence a previous one. Particularly difficult to assess here, as no mound or its border was found. This and a few other things speak in favor of a particularly old design.

The restoration took place in 1968, a first investigation in 1921 by Karl Hermann Jacob-Friesen . According to a publication in the Prehistoric Journal, the grave contained the following finds:

  1. Seven shards of a larger clay pot, the shape of which could not be reconstructed. Three sherds are decorated with parallel grooves and an applied bead, a type of decoration from the Bronze Age.
  2. Some burned bones from what appears to be a youthful individual.
  3. A broken bronze armring about 0.5 centimeter thick wire and five centimeters inner diameter with straight cut ends on top of each other. It is badly weathered and shows a brown moor patina. Only fractions of the ornament made up of vertical groups of lines, between which diagonals are drawn, can be seen. According to the time, the ring belongs to stage III of the Bronze Age according to Oscar Montelius .

As a result, when the chamber was opened, the Neolithic grave inventory was missing . It should have been cleared out on the occasion of the reburial in the Bronze Age. Outside the stone chamber was an urn from the Late Age with a corpse burn, which was leaned against a sloping stone and covered with hill sand.

The facility owes its preservation to the teacher Wilhelmi (Groß Sterneberg), who was not only the first to recognize the stone grave as such, but also worked hard to preserve it when the cap stones were to be used as building material for a war memorial . The stone grave was first leased in 1924 with the surrounding area by the district of Stade and finally acquired by the district in 1969.

Grave 2

Grave 2

Grave 2 has a mound with a length of 20 m and a width of 16 m. The burial chamber is oriented roughly west-east. It has a length of 6 m and a width of 1.5 m. It has four wall stones each on the long sides and a closing stone on the narrow sides. All are still in situ . All cap stones are missing. The quite large spaces between the wall stones are striking. During his investigation, Jacob-Friesen was able to identify carefully executed interstices made of flat field stones, especially in the north-eastern area of ​​the chamber.

Grave 3

Grave 3

The facility is very similar to the neighboring grave 2. It had a mound with a length of 21 m and a width of 18 m. The burial chamber resting in it is oriented approximately east-west. It has a length of about 5.5 m and a width of 1.5 m. The chamber still has four pairs of wall stones on the long sides and a terminal stone on the narrow western side. These are all still in situ. The eastern capstone is missing. Two of the original five capstones still exist. They rest on the wall stones in the eastern area of ​​the chamber, but have probably been shifted slightly to the west from their original position.

Grave 4

The grave has a mound in which parts of a burial chamber became visible through excavations. This only happened after Jacob-Friesen's excavations at the other three graves, so that no further investigation was carried out. All that can be seen is a capstone and two wall stones adjoining it to the north and east. According to Ernst Sprockhoff , the eastern stone could be an end stone and the northern one a wall stone on a long side. It is unclear whether the rest of the burial chamber was destroyed or is still undisturbed underground.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Great stone tombs at Hammah  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence