Great stone graves in northeast Lower Saxony
The megalithic graves in northeast Lower Saxony lie between the Weser , Aller and Elbe . The megalithic systems from the Neolithic Age were created by the Funnel Beaker Culture (TBK) between 3500 and 2800 BC. Built in BC. Although many megalithic structures have been destroyed, numerous are still present in the study area. The undestroyed systems and old records provide an overview of their original distribution. Individual settlement chambers are located in the west of the study area, which consists of moors , lowlands and geest areas . In contrast, the settlement in the Lüneburg Heath largely adheres to the river meadows . The area on both sides of the Aller and its tributaries remains almost free of megalithic systems.
Giant beds
In the west of the study area, the facilities were predominantly covered by round or oval hills. In the east they were mostly in giant beds . The barren beds were usually rectangular, more rarely trapezoidal and only constricted in the middle in Altenmedingen-Haaßel, Uelzen district . With a few exceptions ( Bülzenbett in Sievern , district of Cuxhaven and Bevern , east of the Ilmenau ), there are trapezoidal systems . In addition to extremely small systems that include the chambers (e.g. Barskamp , Lüneburg district ; Dörmte, Uelzen district; and Lehmgrabe, Lüneburg district), there are very long monuments. The former longest, in Niendorf, Uelzen district, has gone. It was about 112 m long and bordered by 166 stones with a width of 3.5 m. There are also very long giant beds near Drangstedt , district of Cuxhaven (90 m; 70 m), Oldendorf and Tosterglope , district of Lüneburg (both 80 m). The rest are mostly between 20 and 40 m long. Their width is around six meters. The giant beds without a chamber are much narrower . Boulders and burial mounds were surrounded by boulders , the smoother sides of which were turned outwards. The completely examined mound bed of Oldendorf, Lüneburg district (80.0: 6.5 m) was bordered by 108 boulders. In the case of the giant beds in the Oldendorfer Totenstatt it has been shown that smaller edging stones were brought to a uniform height by lining them. With other edging, the height of the stones decreases from one end to the other, which is due to the lack of stones of the same size. In some of the giant beds there are so-called guard stones on the narrow side , which can also be moved out of alignment with the long sides, for example in Barskamp and Oldendorf. The significance of this structural measure is unclear. The height of the earthfill in the megalithic beds is different. The chamberless giant beds are almost without exception very flat, as they did not have to cover a chamber. With the others, the embankment seems to have reached over the capstones of the chambers. Like the burial mounds, the backfill material consisted of yellow sand.
orientation
The barren beds west of the Ilmenau are all roughly east-west-oriented, while those east of the river are mostly south-north. Deviations from this orientation can be traced back to natural conditions, in the case of Hünenbett I in Oldendorf, to the exploitation of a bump in the ground, which makes the monument appear more impressive. A stone wreath can be found in a few oval and round hills above the stone chambers (e.g. in Gnarrenburg and Steinfeld, Rotenburg ). Others had a stone mantle, a ceiling made of rolling stones (e.g. Rohstorf , Lüneburg district).
Dolmen
Almost all of the megalithic graves were built at ground level. Sunken chambers are rare. Usually there is only one chamber in a huge bed. Exceptions are only known from Horneburg , Stade district , where the remains of two chambers with several capstones are visible, and from Altenmedingen, Uelzen district, where according to the records, one chamber with six and one with seven capstones were found in the megalithic bed. The chambers are usually at one end of the megalithic bed, more rarely in the middle. The chambers can be divided into a number of types depending on their shape and size. Most of them are rectangular, less often trapezoidal ( Meyenburg and Osterholz-Scharmbeck , district of Osterholz , Lamstedt , district of Cuxhaven, Ahndorf , Boitze and Lehmgrabe, district of Lüneburg) and occasionally also slightly oval ( Flögeln , district of Cuxhaven and Steinfeld , district of Rotenburg). The spaces between the supporting stones were filled with plates ( intermediate masonry). According to the findings of Birkenmoor , Schleswig-Holstein, the chambers were likely to have been surrounded on the inside by a clay coat.
The smallest form of the burial chamber is the Urdolmen , a man-length chamber made of side stones on the narrow side and a single capstone in the investigation area. One of the side stones can be halfway high in order to provide access to the chamber, which is often somewhat recessed and whose clear width is around 2.5 m × 1.0 m. From north-eastern Lower Saxony, only the barracks dolmen in the Lüneburg district can be counted as belonging to this form. A form with a short corridor on the narrow side can be found in Nahrendorf, Lüneburg district. The Urdolmen in Altenmedingen-Haaßel, Uelzen district, is one of the few facilities with access from above. The distribution of the Urdolmen close to the Elbe points to contacts in southern Holstein and western Mecklenburg .
The enlarged dolmens show larger dimensions, also in height . With them, as with the other chamber shapes, the supporting stones stand upright on the smallest surface in order to achieve a greater height. The chambers are built from five to six supporting stones, with the cap stones resting on three points. The entrance is on one of the narrow sides and is often closed by a half-height entry stone. In a series of enlarged dolmens, one of the long sides is formed by three bearing stones, but they too only have two cap stones. Two of the extended dolmens from Grundoldendorf in the Stade district show a different shape . One has a half-stone that obstructs the access to half, the other shows the tendency to enlarge the chamber with three pairs of supporting stones. The majority of the extended dolmens in the study area are located in barren beds and there transverse to the longitudinal axis. Only on the Bremerhaven / Cuxhavener Geest are some of them under round hills. The spread of the enlarged dolmens has priority. Chambers facing south-north are known from the Bremerhaven / Cuxhaven area, another dolmen is southeast of Stade an der Luhe and a third, but with east-west facing chambers, is in the eastern Lüneburg Heath, in the catchment area of the Neetze . A polygonal pole in the extreme west of the Elbe-Weser triangle has come down to us only in literature .
Stone boxes
In addition to the monuments erected on the ground, there are also some stone boxes sunk into the ground. The chamber was lined with flat stones; Little is known about the superstructure in the study area ( Fehrenbruch , Flögeln , Hagenah , Heerstedt and Meckelstedt ).
Passage graves
All other megalithic systems do not have access on a narrow side, but on one of the long sides. As a rule, the number of cap stones corresponds to the number of bearing stones, but there is occasionally an additional pair of bearing stones. In the eastern area, in the Lüneburg Heath, it sometimes happens that the long side has one more bearing stone opposite the access. The stone chamber in the necropolis of Soderstorf , district of Lüneburg, is an exception ; it has five bearing stones on the access side and only four on the opposite, closed long side.
distribution
Chambers with three cap stones are loosely scattered throughout the area, especially where there are extended dolmens. With larger chambers, the result is more informative. With a few exceptions, there are no medium-sized and long chambers with an uneven capstone number in the Elbe-Weser triangle and on the Stader Geest . Chambers with five and seven cap stones remain limited to the Lüneburg Heath. In the west they are largely replaced by those with four cap stones. Very long chambers with six or more capstones are concentrated along the Bremen-Verdener Geest, in the southern part of the Stader Geest and in the Ilmenau and Neetzetal. The area between Luhe and Seeve , which is densely covered with small chambers, remains free. Another division into a western and an eastern area results from the location of the entrance. In the case of the chambers with four, six and eight capstones in the investigation area, the access is always in the middle of a long side. One was so consistent with this principle that z. B. at the burial chamber with three cap stones from Steinfeld, district of Rotenburg, there were only two bearing stones on one long side, between which the access was located. In the eastern area, the access is necessarily off-center due to the odd number of bearing stones. The deliberate eccentricity of the so-called Holstein chambers is even clearer. In the case of chambers with four or more cap stones, the access is between the first and second bearing stones, and in the case of very long chambers it is between the second and third.
Accesses
Often the access is protected by one or more rarely two low pairs of supporting stones and a corresponding number of cap stones above. In the actual entrance there is often a flat threshold stone with a stepping stone in front of it, usually a sandstone slab. After occupancy, access to the chamber was blocked by field stones the size of a fist or head. However, other possibilities could also be observed on various occasions. In Hammah and Deinste , district of Stade, a large granite stone was pushed forward; in Nenndorf, district of Harburg , a slab was found inside that is wider than the access that it closed. Something similar was observed during the excavations in Emsen-Langenrehm , Eyendorf , Harburg district, and, according to older excavation reports, also in Flögeln.
Floors
The interior of the chambers is either paved with mostly extremely carefully laid flat sandstones and granites or it is a veritable cobblestone pavement made of pebbles . A layer of granite gravel several centimeters thick, and occasionally also burnt flint, was poured over it. Lumps of clay indicate that the floor was finally smoothed with clay screed like a threshing floor . Flat stones in the upper areas of the chambers filled with sand indicate a secondary flooring.
Quarters
A delimitation by raised plates inside the chambers was very rarely recognized in the study area (Flögeln, and Radenbeck, Lüneburg district), a structural separation measure that could be observed more frequently in Holstein, Mecklenburg and Scandinavia.
Mega bed without a chamber
A special group of megalithic structures are the chamberless megalithic beds, long rectangular or trapezoidal earth embankments with a border made of boulders. In addition to very flat monuments (Barskamp and Tosterglope, Lüneburg district) there are also monuments up to 1.5 m in height (Oldendorf). There are no stone chambers inside, but wooden ones (Oldendorf and Tosterglope 2). From Bavendorf and Oldendorf Longer stone pavements are known on which the burials were made.The distribution of the monuments, almost exclusively in the Boltersen and Horndorf area near the Elbe , indicates connections with western Mecklenburg and the Lauenburg Sachsenwald .
particularities
Some systems differ from the others in terms of shape and design. The stone grave D of the seven stone houses of Fallingbostel has a huge capstone, an almost square chamber and unusually flat granite wall stones . At a nearby hill in a round, only from a drawing known plant of Twistenbostel , district of Rotenburg , the extremely long access of about 6.0 m falls out of the frame. In 1979, Friedrich Laux suspected Western European influences here as well as with the polygonal pole . In the meantime, however, it is clear , especially through the work of Ewald Schuldt , that these are not available.
The megalithic systems were located individually or in groups, which rarely include more than three to five systems. Only occasionally does such a group consist of a single type of chamber. Usually these are burial chambers of different shapes and sizes. However, only certain sizes appear together, such as small and medium-sized chambers, medium-sized and long chambers or in larger groups also small, medium-sized and long burial chambers, but never small and long chambers. Obviously, behind the different sizes of the burial chambers in one group, a developmental tendency becomes visible, which leads from the primeval dolmens via the enlarged dolmens to the medium-sized and long passage graves, an only apparent tendency that is due to excavation findings that place the oldest dolmens next to the oldest passage graves , became obsolete.
Construction crew theory
According to Friedrich Laux , different "building traditions" and "building schools" are behind this dissemination. On the basis of the technical details, Ewald Schuldt concluded as early as 1972 that the monuments were carried out under the “guidance of a specialist or groups of specialists”. A religious movement was suspected early on behind these graves (JK Wächter 1841, p. 9). Similar to Christianity in only 2000 years, this could split into different sects in the course of more than 8000 years ( Vere Gordon Childe 1947, p. 46). The characteristics of the systems could then be determined locally, whereby one does not exclude the other.
Finds
In the complex there are grave goods made of slate , axes made of rock, hatchets, blades and arrowheads made of flint , pearls made of amber and decorated and undecorated, shattered , rarely complete clay vessels. The axes are thin-necked flint axes, polished on all sides. The chambers contain one find, more rarely two. If other types, such as thick-nosed or thin-bladed flint axes, also appear, ceramics from subsequent burials of the spherical amphora and single grave culture can usually be identified to which axes can be assigned. The flint blades are finger-length chips, mostly without retouching the edge. The arrowheads made from tee-offs have a sweeping trapezoidal, occasionally triangular shape. Axes were made from rock. A shape with a domed neck, sweeping edge, groove-like decoration on the narrow sides, fullness of the shaft and other features that refer to metal models is called a Hanoverian type double ax. Its distribution in western Hanover and in the Elbe-Weser triangle once again underlines the contrast to the Lüneburg Heath, where this form is unknown.
See also
literature
- Ewald Schuldt : The Mecklenburg megalithic graves. Research on their architecture and function . Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1972 ( contributions to the prehistory and early history of the districts of Rostock, Schwerin and Neubrandenburg . 6, ISSN 0138-4279 ).
- Friedrich Laux: The large stone graves in northeastern Lower Saxony . In: H. Schirnig (Ed.): Großsteingräber in Niedersachsen 1979 . Pp. 59-82, ISBN 3-7848-1224-4 .
- Friedrich Laux: The great stone graves between Weser and Elbe . In: On the Younger Stone Age in Northern Germany. Insights into the life of the first farmers 2000 pp. 42–63
swell
- ↑ F. Laux says: With the help of the shapes, their sizes, the distribution and analysis of the grave goods, regional groups can be distinguished from one another. In the north German lowlands these are south of the EIbe from east to west: the Altmärker, the Lüneburg, the Stader and the group in the lower Aller valley. To the west of the Weser are the Oldenburg-Emsland, Osnabrück and Emsland-Drenthic groups and to the south the southern Hanoverian group of the Hessian-Westphalian stone box culture [LAUX 1990, p. 181]. To the north of the Elbe, the Holstein and Schleswig groups join, as well as other local groups in Mecklenburg (which E. Schuldt divides according to the prevalence of the types). The two groups in northeast Lower Saxony are the Lüneburg and the Stader group. With the noticeable change in the forms and decorations of the ceramic finds, the burial chambers of all groups are enlarged
- ↑ “If you also come across stone chambers in a very small geographical area, the matching structural elements, e.g. B. similarly manufactured threshold stones have, yes z. Sometimes they are almost identical in size, then one is inclined to think of construction crews who wandered around in the individual partial landscapes and carried out their assignments. Their job is likely to have included the procurement of the selected building material as well as the processing of the boulders themselves ”. And: "Since the construction of such chambers with the inwardly inclined wall stones requires a certain knowledge of statics, you can always count on a responsible builder who was responsible for the management."
- ↑ "... made it possible to establish that the monuments were erected under the guidance of specialists or groups of specialists". E. Schuldt 1972, p. 106