Menhir from Westerhausen
The menhir of Westerhausen is a menhir from Westerhausen , a district of Thale in the Harz district in Saxony-Anhalt . Today it is in front of the Castle Museum in Quedlinburg .
Location and description
The stone was discovered at the beginning of the 20th century when a burial mound was examined on the Honigkopf near Westerhausen . 6 meters from the foot of the hill was a group of jumbled stones. They probably served as a sacrificial site during the original use phase of the hill for a burial of the end Neolithic ceramic cord culture . During the Neolithic period, the hill was rebuilt and reused, and the sacrificial site was destroyed. One of the stones belonging to this was a decorated menhir, which was brought to Quedlinburg after the excavation. Ashes , charcoal and bone fragments were found on his foot, indicating sacrifices.
The menhir is made of sandstone . Its height is 111 cm, the width 50 cm and the depth 45 cm. The stone is irregularly plate-shaped and has some decorations. The most striking decorations are two grooves 3–4 cm wide and 2 cm deep. They run slightly offset to one another at the upper end across half of the stone. Furthermore, the menhir has three parallel grooves, angular and zigzag incisions and several apparently modern letter incisions.
In research, the stone was rated differently. Alexander Häusler interpreted it as a begun, but ultimately not fully executed statue menhir . However, this and similar grooved stones can also be interpreted as a phallic symbol .
literature
- Johannes Groht: Menhirs in Germany. State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology Saxony-Anhalt, Halle (Saale) 2013, ISBN 978-3-943904-18-5 , pp. 433, 462.
- Alexander Häusler: Anthropomorphic steles from the end of the Neolithic in the northern Pontic region (= work from the Institute for Prehistory and Early History of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Volume 15). Halle (Saale) 1966, pp. 40–41, 62.
- Detlef Schünemann: News from grooved and gutter stones. Attempt to form groups based on exact profile measurements. In: The customer. NF Volume 43, 1992, pp. 75, 81.