Great stone grave Hilter
| Great stone grave Hilter | |||
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| Coordinates | 52 ° 8 '26.2 " N , 8 ° 8' 41.9" E | ||
| place | Hilter am Teutoburg Forest , Lower Saxony , Germany | ||
| Emergence | 2550 to 2400 BC Chr. | ||
The large stone grave Hilter is a burial complex of the Neolithic funnel cup culture in the municipality of Hilter in the Teutoburg Forest in the district of Osnabrück in Lower Saxony .
location
The grave is in the north of Hilter, east of the street Zum Schoppenbusch and south of the Rankenbach.
description
The grave, which was probably already badly damaged in the 19th century, was first discovered in 1902 and scientifically examined. The remains of the facility were discovered by chance when a pit was being built. An excavation was then carried out under Friedrich Knoke. In addition to skeletal remains and ceramic shards, bone planks and a perforated copper band were discovered. However, Knoke did not give any exact location information in his excavation report, so that the grave could not be precisely located at first. It was only rediscovered in 1982, after which another excavation and subsequent reconstruction took place in 1983. From the excavation it emerged that the complex was oriented east-west and was trapezoidal. The length was 15 m, the width was between 2.7 m and 4 m. The architecture of the tomb is quite unusual. As is customary with Nordic megalithic graves, its walls consisted of boulders and intermediate masonry . Eight of these boulders were still preserved. In the eastern part, however, there was a transverse row of four broken limestone slabs that divided the interior of the grave into an antechamber and a main chamber. Such an architectural element is more typical of the gallery graves of the Hessian-Westphalian megalithic . The facility in Hilter thus represents a mixed or transitional form between the northern passage graves and the gallery graves further south. The floor of the burial chamber was paved with limestone slabs. Some post pits also indicated old wooden support posts for the ceiling. Nothing was preserved of the ceiling itself; it was possibly made of tufa-limestone or wood. The spectrum of finds from the second excavation included further skeletal remains, ceramics, jewelry made from animal teeth and arrowheads. With the help of ceramics, the grave could be traced back to the period between 2550 and 2400 BC. To be dated.
After the excavation, a reconstruction of the facility took place about 300 m from the original location, although there were major deviations from the excavation findings and only a small amount of the original building fabric was used. For example, quarry stone slabs were used for the pavement and field stones for the intermediate masonry. Both were fixed with cement mortar.
literature
- Ute Bartelt : Own construction method - large stone graves in western Lower Saxony. In: Archeology in Germany. Volume 4/2009, pp. 26-29 ( online ).
- Friedrich Knoke: Find reports. In: Messages from the Association for History and Regional Studies of Osnabrück. Volume 28, 1903, pp. 238ff.
- 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. 127.
- Klemens Wilhelmi (ed.): Excavations in Lower Saxony. Archaeological preservation of monuments 1979 to 1984. Theiss, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 978-3-8062-0444-5 .