Tregiffian

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Tregiffian - Cornwall - UK
View into the Tregiffian Burial Chamber

The Tregiffian is a 4000 to 5000 year old megalithic complex from the late Neolithic or the early Bronze Age and is located south of Penzance between the towns of St Buryan and Lamorna in Cornwall in England . It represents a rare special form of a passage tomb , which is known in the English-speaking world as an Entrance Grave . This type of system is typical for the neighboring Isles of Scilly .

location

The Tregiffian is located in south-west Cornwall south of Penzance between the towns of St Buryan and Lamorna, right on the roadside. On the other side of the street is the menhir Gun Rith (also called The Fiddler ) 100 meters away . A few hundred meters away is the stone circle of the Merry Maidens . There are other megalithic sites in the vicinity :

construction

In contrast to the Cornish Quoits , the large stone grave , which in 1846 was half covered by a road, is mostly covered with earth, only the access to the Tregiffian Long Barrow was exposed. A few stones can still be seen from the hill border that originally fortified the earthfill. A covered corridor led from the edge of the complex to the 4 m deep burial chamber, which is covered by four 3 m long stones. In front of the chamber, a transverse stone decorated with cup-and-ring markings forms a barrier. The original stone is in Truro, in the Cornwall Museum, the local stone is a replica. Inside the grave was the burial chamber, which consists of vertical stones and a cover plate. The Tregiffian, together with the Merry Maidens and other tombs, probably formed a sacred area.

Research history

In 1871 William Copeland Borlase had become aware of the grave and had excavations carried out for the first time. First he discovered the stones of the edge fortification and uncovered a capstone on which he found flints, ashes and remains of bones. When digging deeper, Borlase came across pits with remains of bones that indicated cremations. In 1932 Hencken determined for the first time that the complex was probably a special form of a megalithic grave and classified this grave type between dolmen and stone box . It was not until more recent research that a variant of the dolmen was recognized in passage graves, which stands out from the dolmen especially in terms of access to the interior . Extensive excavations in 1968 and 1972 revealed urns whose content dates back to around 1900 BC. BC could be dated. The appearance of these two forms of burial is typical for an Entrance Grave and indicates a use as a communal grave over a longer period of time.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Copeland Borlase: Naenia Cornubiae , Longmans 1872
  2. ^ Hugh O'Neill Hencken: The Archeology of Cornwall and Scilly , Metheun 1932
  3. ^ Glyn Edmund Daniel: The Megalith Builders of Western Europe , Harmondsworth, Penguin 1963

literature

  • Ian McNeil Cooke: Standing Stones of the Land's End . Cornwall: Men-an-Tol Studio 1998, ISBN 0951237195 .

Web links

Commons : Tregiffian Burial Chamber  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 50 ° 3 '52 "  N , 5 ° 35' 31"  W.