Stone box from Heerstedt

Heerstedter stone box with a reconstructed sample grave

Heerstedter stone box

The Heerstedt stone box (also called Heerstedt Langenbarg) is a trapezoidal stone box built from flat boulders , about two meters long and one meter wide. It is located in the corridor, about 600 m northeast of the Am Kreuzkamp von Heerstedt settlement . The location is southeast of Bremerhaven , in the Elbe-Weser triangle in Lower Saxony on the Geest on the edge of the Great Moor.

history

In 1938, when sand was extracted from the 15 m long and 6 m wide hill, the "Long Mountain of Heerstedt", first some urn burials and finally the undisturbed stone box were discovered.

description

The excavation was carried out by B. Lincke, who fell in World War II before his evaluation of the excavation was available. The excavation results have been reconstructed. The finds were destroyed in the 1946 fire in the open-air museum in Speckenbüttel .

“The experts date these grave goods to the time 1500 and 1250 BC. Chr. Geb. The originals were destroyed by fire in 1946. Replicas can be found in the Historisches Museum Bremerhaven. "

- Explanation on the information board at the Heerstedter stone box

Finds in the stone box (): 1 = bronze sword with wooden scabbard (length 79 cm), 2 = bronze ax (length 17.9 cm), 3 = bronze dagger with wooden scabbard (length of the blade 16.8 cm), 4 = bronze brooch (length 10 cm), 5 = bronze finger ring (diameter 2.5 cm), 6 = remnants of a wooden bowl (largest diameter 25.5 cm) studded with bronze pins and bosses made of tinplate, bronze rings once hung on the handle.

Remnants of wood under the skull indicate that the deceased was buried in a tree coffin inside the chamber . To the right of the buried was a bronze ax and a 79 cm long bronze sword with an artfully decorated handle . On the left at waist level was a bronze dagger , the handle of which had not been preserved. On the right side of the body was a flat bronze brooch , the temple of which was decorated with a series of seven concentric circles. The dead man wore a bronze ring on his left hand. In the north-west corner, a round wooden bowl with decorative nails was found on a stone slab, which is the only find of this kind in Lower Saxony and can otherwise only be found in Scandinavia . It was heavily crushed but restorable. A twelve-pointed star and two nail circles formed from fine rows of nails (250 nails) were visible on the underside of the vessel. The finds, and possibly also the construction of the stone box, can be dated to the older Bronze Age . The rare find found its place in the coat of arms of the municipality of Heerstedt . The coat of arms shows three golden Odal runes and a black wooden bowl.

See also

• Nordic megalithic architecture
• List of stone boxes
• Langer Berg von Langen - a burial mound with a similar field name

literature

• Karl-Hermann Jacob-Friesen : Introduction to Lower Saxony's prehistory. Part 2: Karl-Hermann Jacob-Friesen: The Bronze Age (= publications of the Prehistoric Collections of the State Museum in Hanover. 15, 2, ISSN  0931-6280 ). 4th, significantly enlarged edition. Lax, Hildesheim 1963.
• Barnim Lincke: A Bronze Age route in northern Hanover. In: Gustav Schwantes (Ed.): Prehistory studies on both sides of the Lower Elbe. Dedicated to KH Jacob-Friesen (= depictions from Lower Saxony's prehistory. 4, ZDB -ID 539992-0 ). Lax, Hildesheim 1939, pp. 125-145.

Web links

• Description Engl. and pictures

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Photo of the whole information board
   

Coordinates: 53 ° 28 ′ 10.8 "  N , 8 ° 46 ′ 22.2"  E