Tannenhausen stone grave
| Tannenhausen stone grave | |||
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 The reconstructed burial mound |
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| Coordinates | 53 ° 30 '53 " N , 7 ° 28' 13.5" E | ||
| place | Tannenhausen , Lower Saxony , Germany | ||
| Emergence | 3500 to 2800 BC Chr. | ||
| Sprockhoff no. | 817 | ||
The Tannenhausen large stone grave , also popularly known as butter, bread and cheese (East Fr. Low German : Botter, Brood un Kääs), are two large megalithic structures from prehistoric times, which are located close to the small town of Tannenhausen , 4.3 kilometers north of Aurich , a district town in East Frisia .
description
The two systems were explored in 1962 and 1963 under the direction of the East Frisian landscape . In the stone grave, ceramics from the western group of the funnel cup culture - bowls, funnel cups, shoulder vessels, and collar flasks (one with a double nozzle) as well as stone tools were found. They show that the grave is around 5000 years old. The finds are exhibited in the Historisches Museum Aurich and Heimatmuseum Leer .
Pottery from the large stone grave in Tannenhausen. AO: Heimatmuseum Leer
Pottery from the large stone grave in Tannenhausen. AO: Heimatmuseum Leer
Pottery from the large stone grave in Tannenhausen. AO: Heimatmuseum Leer
Although there are numerous funnel cup sites in East Friesland, only three other former locations ( Brinkum , Leer and Utarp ) of large stone graves are known that have been completely destroyed (apart from the remains in Tannenhausen). It is assumed that most of the graves in the stone-poor area of East Friesland were destroyed in the course of Christianization and the associated church building, but also during the later port and dike expansion.
From the large stone grave in Tannenhausen only two cap stones and one bearing stone are preserved today. These preserved stones belong to the western chamber. During the excavations at the beginning of the 1960s, the standing pits of the missing bearing stones could be identified. It also turned out that there was a second grave next to it.
The stone graves of Tannenhausen are assigned to the western group of the funnel cup culture due to their type of construction . Both burial chambers had an entrance on their south side , which, however, was not built from stone blocks as is usually the case, but rather from wooden posts, similar to some systems in the province of Drenthe (Netherlands). The grave type because of its access from the long side, usually passage grave but called portal grave, in the absence of lithic transition. The western chamber was about twelve meters long, 2.2 to 2.8 meters wide and 1.3 meters high. It consisted of about 20 large boulders . The east chamber was about 11.2 meters long and 2.2 to 3.2 meters wide. The roof of the chambers was probably formed from five or six large capstones. Both burial chambers were covered by oval mounds.
In the course of the excavations it was proven that a soil profile with the sequence of heather-horizon, bleaching sand, local stone and oak-birch forest is pending under the grave, which indicates an early heather formation, probably as a result of clearing. In addition to many deeply engraved pottery shards, the excavation also yielded amber beads and axes made of flint and rock. In connection with the excavation, prehistoric sites in the vicinity of Tannenhausen were recorded. A plank path and a sand path were detected that were overgrown by the moor and were determined by pollen analysis.
Dating
The shape of the large stone grave of Tannenhausen belongs to the late funnel cup period passage graves. The funnel beaker culture was the first rural culture in northern Central Europe. It followed the hunted Mesolithic period . The grave is dated to the early phase of the western group and is believed to have been around 3500 BC. BC. This makes the system one of the first of its kind in the region.
reconstruction
In 2014 the city of Aurich had the eastern burial chamber reconstructed with the support of the East Frisian landscape. To do this, she bought seven head-high boulders, each weighing around five tons, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, three of which form the entrance area. In addition, the city had a circular route laid out on which there are boards with information about the structure and importance of the large stone grave. The city invested a total of 170,000 euros, some of which was financed by EU and state funds.
See also
literature
- Ute Bartelt : Own construction method - large stone graves in western Lower Saxony. In: Archeology in Germany. Volume 4/2009, pp. 26-29 ( online ).
- I. Gabriel: The megalithic grave in Tannenhausen, Aurich district , Aurich 1966
- W. Schwarz: The large stone grave near Tannenhausen. Ostfriesland. Guide to archaeological monuments in Germany 35 , Stuttgart 1999, pp. 142–144.
- 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. 89.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ostfriesische Fundchronik 1962 / Tannenhausen
- ↑ Jan Kegler (Archaeological Service of the East Frisian Landscape ): Find of the month - April 2014: Large stones - small finds. Tannenhausen (Fst.-No. 2410/9: 1) . Retrieved March 1, 2015.
- ↑ Marion Luppen: "We are proud that we have something like this" . In: Ostfriesen-Zeitung of August 8, 2014. Retrieved on February 23, 2015