Great stone graves near Masendorf
| Great stone graves near Masendorf | |||
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| Coordinates | 53 ° 2 '2.6 " N , 10 ° 37' 17.9" E | ||
| place | Uelzen , Lower Saxony , Germany | ||
| Emergence | 3500 to 2800 BC Chr. | ||
| Sprockhoff no. | 778-780 | ||
The large stone graves near Masendorf were four grave complexes of the Neolithic funnel beaker culture near the Masendorf part of Uelzen in the district of Uelzen ( Lower Saxony ). The graves were first described by Georg Otto Carl von Estorff in 1846 . One of the graves no longer existed at that time, and two more were destroyed in the second half of the 19th century. The preserved grave 1 bears the Sprockhoff number 778, the destroyed graves 2 and 3 the numbers 779 and 780.
location
Grave 1 is in a straight line north of Masendorf and east of the Emmendorfer district of Heitbrack in a wooded area. About 1.7 km south-southeast of this and 500 m north of Masendorf, only 170 m apart, were graves 2 and 3. The fourth grave, which was destroyed in the early 19th century, was on the eastern edge of Masendorf.
description
The preserved grave 1
The complex has a poorly preserved, north-north-west-south-south-east oriented mound bed , which was 47 m long when von Estorff was taken. Ernst Sprockhoff was able to determine a length of 30 m and a width of 5 m for the mound and the stone enclosure. He attributed this to the partial destruction of the facility during the construction of a forest path, for which a single stone standing north of the path is an indication. The stone enclosure is very incomplete. It has eight stones on the western long side and seven or eight on the eastern side. Most of the stones are no longer in situ . Four stones within the enclosure mark the long eastern side of a burial chamber.
The destroyed grave 2
Grave 2 had a north-east-south-west oriented burial chamber. It already showed major damage when it was taken by von Estorff. The two end stones were still in situ at that time, the two wall stones on the long sides adjoining the north-eastern end stone and the south-western wall stone on the north-western long side. Four capstones were left, three of which had fallen inside the chamber. A fourth lay abducted to the northeast outside the chamber.
The destroyed grave 3
Grave 3 was oriented northeast-southwest. The burial chamber still had four wall stones on the north-western long side and the south-western end stone in situ when von Estorff took it. All other wall stones were already missing. Four capstones had fallen inside the chamber. One of them was significantly larger in size than the others.
The destroyed grave 4
Grave 4 was already destroyed in the 1840s and could therefore not be described in detail by von Estorff. No information is available on the orientation, dimensions and type of grave. The card signature only shows that it had a rectangular barren bed.
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.
- Karl Hermann Jacob : The megalithic graves of the district of Ülzen and the protection of the prehistoric monuments. In: News sheet for Lower Saxony's prehistory. Volume 1, 1920, pp. 21ff.
- Ernst Sprockhoff : Atlas of the megalithic tombs of Germany. Part 3: Lower Saxony - Westphalia. Rudolf-Habelt Verlag, Bonn 1975, ISBN 3-7749-1326-9 , pp. 66-67, 75.
