Stone box from other animals
The Anderlingen stone box is the most famous stone box in Germany, which was created around 3,400 years ago in the older Bronze Age . It was found in 1907 in a hill near Anderlingen in the Rotenburg (Wümme) district and is now in Hanover . The village of Anderlingen is located about 16 km southeast of Bremervörde on a tongue of geest. About a kilometer northeast of the village, where the Geest sinks to the Twiste , a small right tributary of the Oste , were three burial mounds .
Excavation history
The large round mound with a diameter of 25 m and a height of about two meters was excavated in 1907 in order to extract the sand and stones that formed a wreath around the mound as building and paving material. In the middle of the hill they came across a pile of average double-headed blocks that were smashed. Presumably it was the stone packing of the central burial. Nothing is known about their shape. Apart from a piece of bronze, no finds were made. Just below the hill surface one found two small, a wide mouth urns from the migration period , in which once cremated remains found. Later the edge shard of a third vessel was picked up. The stone box, which was eccentrically sunk into the ground, was found near the southeastern edge. Its south and middle parts were covered with two stone slabs, the north end was open. The third cover plate was found in the mass of the hill. The crypt was emptied by a collector who also bought the urns. In the north part there were some unburned bone remains, in the south part the bronzes. As a result, it became known that three human figures were carved on the southern keystone of the box. Unfortunately, a few things had been picked out on them, which concerned the middle figure, but especially the right figure. The hill and the Bronze Age stone box of Anderlingen were then saved from destruction at the last minute.
excavation
After a site inspection in January 1908, the remains of the mound were excavated, exposing the stone settlements to the east of the box, and about 20 cm below the surface in the mantle of the migratory mantle, three primers from the Migration Period and an iron knife were recovered.
The stone box with the subsequent stone setting was brought to Hanover and rebuilt next to the Lower Saxony State Museum ( 52 ° 21 ′ 53.7 ″ N , 9 ° 44 ′ 24.4 ″ E ) . The finds are also in Hanover. The picture stone ended up in the public collection, so that nothing can be seen at the place where it was found.
The large mound, which was probably built in several phases and in the mantle of which was sunk into the migratory burial , apparently contained several burials from the earlier Bronze Age . On the western edge of the hill, outside the stone wreath, several irregular, radially placed man-length pavements were supposed to have been present.
The stone box
The length of the box, which was aligned from northeast to southwest, had an interior length of 2.0 m, a width of 0.7 m and a considerable height of 1.0 m. It was built from split granite blocks. Five or seven vertically positioned plates, some of which had small plates underneath for wedging, formed the long sides, and one large plate each at the northern and southern ends. Since the northern part of the cover plates had sunk in the mound in ancient times, but a natural process is impossible, there is reason to assume that the relocation is due to an ancient robbery. The unpaved box, on the bottom of which there was only a single flat stone, had been embedded about 50 cm into the natural ground, as was the surrounding foundation made of unhewn blocks about 50 cm in diameter.
Further stone setting
Immediately to the east of the box, a little to the south, one found a man-length, flat at one end and roughly semicircular closing block at the other, the interior of which was paved with small stones. It was probably the foundation and the supporting stones of a tree coffin .
Finds
In the at least ransacked north end of the box were some unburned bones. Right in front of the southern keystone, three bronzes could be found on the burial level, lying close to each other, which can be dated to the older Bronze Age, namely to period II after Montelius . It is a "Nordic round head brooch" with a solidly cast "twisted" bow, on which a small remnant of woolen fabric had been preserved due to the infiltration of copper salts, a heel ax of the "East Hanoverian" type, in the groove of which parts of the wooden shaft were preserved, and a dagger blade with a rounded staple plate in which the rivets for holding the handle were still in place. The dagger should have stuck almost vertically in the ground. Remnants of the wooden leather-covered scabbard were preserved on it; There were also traces of the wooden handle with flat arched broad-headed nails.
The picture stone
The greatest specialty of the stone box is the southern end stone with a pictorial representation. It is particularly carefully split and shows three carved human figures. The rendering of the people is similar to the rock paintings of southern Scandinavia, but are the only ones found in Germany so far. Therefore, the picture stone caused a stir, also because it was only found weeks later. The suspicion expressed early on that the stone had been subsequently manipulated could never be completely dispelled.
A complete forgery is excluded, as an old discoloration, probably caused by cult fire, covers parts of the figures as well as parts of the southern capstone. At the beginning of the 1960s, the suspicion was expressed that around the turn of 1907 and 1908, when the stone was still in place, someone with knowledge of the appearance of Nordic rock art had changed the figures and, among other things, added the splayed fingers and the hatchet; but this thesis must remain doubtful. The left and middle figures are certainly to be addressed as men; the left has raised her arms and spread three fingers, the middle one is turned to the right and holds up a hatchet or an ax. The figure on the right was probably wearing a long robe and holding its arms slightly outstretched.
The figures show a relationship to the rock art of southern Scandinavia, such as the rock art from Bohhuslän and the sites of Sagaholm and Kivik . An interpretation encounters difficulties - not least because of possible modern changes. It may be a trinity of gods, but it could also be a cult scene that may be related to the funeral celebrations for the person buried here. The size of the burial chamber was only suitable for one corpse, who was probably buried in a tree coffin or a plank box. Judging by the amount of work involved, it was a socially distinguished personality, and it would at least be conceivable that essential additions were stolen from the north side of the chamber during an old robbery. A very similar inventory with fibula, dagger and hatchet also contained the stone box from Hagenah in the Stade district.
Reburials
Subsequent burials of the Great Migration Period were the two clay vessels , which were probably to be addressed as urns, and the rest of a third. The important inventory that was found during the scheduled follow-up examination is the three fibulae and an iron knife. Tissue remnants that adhered to the fibulae and the degree of preservation of the pieces show that the find does not belong to a cremation. The brooches lay with the decorative surfaces facing downwards at a small distance from each other, the knife was about 5 cm below the large brooch. Apparently it was the remains of a Saxon body grave, which based on the fibulae can be assigned to a woman and dated to the second half of the 5th century AD. The simple iron knife is a common addition in men's and women's graves at that time. As the prints show, it had a wooden handle. The large, so-called equal-armed fibula is cast from bronze and shows traces of gilding. The needle and spiral were made of iron. The richly carved decorations with spiral patterns and stylized animal figures represent influences from the late Roman art industry, which were further developed by local workshops. Such fibula finds are limited to the Saxon area. They belong to the time of the translation to England and can be found in a few copies of the same type in the south-east of the British Isles . The two bird fibulae, which wear a man’s mask in their plumage, come from one form. They are cast from silver and gold-plated. The needles were made of bronze. Late relatives of the Anderlinger bird fibulae played a role in the Franconian region during the 6th century.
The equipment of a man with a long sword, lance tip, two knives, belt components and an accessory vessel, which also belonged to a body grave, was reburied in one of the immediately neighboring small mounds.
See also
literature
- H. Hahne: excavation of a hill near Anderlingen, Bremervörde district. Yearbook of the Provincial Museum in Hanover 1907/1908, p. 13ff
- HW Böhme: Germanic grave finds from the 4th to 5th centuries between the lower EIbe and the Loire. Munich Contributions to Pre- and Early History 19 (1974) 220.
- Karl-Hermann Jacob-Friesen : Introduction to Lower Saxony's prehistory . Part 2: The Bronze Age . 4th significantly expanded edition. Lax, Hildesheim 1963 ( publications of the prehistoric collections of the Landesmuseum zu Hannover 15, ISSN 0931-6280 ).
- Ernst Andreas Friedrich : Der Bildstein von Anderlingen , pp. 41–43, in: If stones could talk. Volume I, Landbuch-Verlag, Hannover 1989, ISBN 3-7842-0397-3 .
- Willi Wegewitz : The picture stone in the Bronze Age stone box of Anderlingen . In: The Adventure of Archeology . Isensee, Oldenburg 1994, ISBN 3-89442-230-0 , p. 73-76 .
- Stefan Hesse: The picture stone of Anderlingen - a century find in: Archeology in Lower Saxony , 2007, pp. 80–83
Web links
Coordinates: 53 ° 22 ′ 44.5 " N , 9 ° 18 ′ 47.1" E