Previous Home Next

Added June 29, 2001. Updated April 25, 2006, 10:50 hours.

  • Under Construction!
  • Only some illustrations have been added.
  • This page uses *.PNG graphics, which are visible in Explorer 5.5 and later. If you use a different browser, they may not be visible.

 

A SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF MEGALITHIC TOMBS

                                                                                                                                                             13. MOUNDS AND ENCLOSURES

By

Maximilian O. Baldia

1993, 1995, 1999-2001©
All rights reserved

 

 

13.1     Introduction

 

Many, but not all chambers are located in burial mounds. Following Daniel, one suspects that all chambers were intended to be covered by mounds, since they are an integral part of chamber construction. They waterproofed the chambers and provided structural support by keeping the stones from shifting and collapsing (Fig.13.1). However, some chambers, such as Heveskesklooster (Bakker 1992) (Bakker 1992), may never have been complete­ly covered.

 

 

 

Figure 13.1. The complex, watertight seal of the Jordehøj, Møn passage-grave (Hansen 1993a:60 Fig. 97). Elaborate layers of crushed flint, clay, stones, and soil cover the chamber.

 

 

 

Not counting 880 unclassifiable megalithic tombs, 2411 structures exhibit evidence of mounds, while 2217 chambers are not known to have had mounds or enclosures. Thus 52.0959% of the chambers were covered by mounds. Considering the enormous destruction of the tombs, this may be a fairly strong indication that most, if not all chambers, must have had a mound cover.

 

 

 

TABLE 13.1

Classifiable chambers without traces of mounds or enclosures

            CHAMBER TYPE            NO MOUNDS                  TOTAL                       NO MOUND

                        UD                               61                               272                                  22.42%

                        ED                               67                               261                                  25.67

                        PD                               28                                 61                                   45.90

                        GD                               64                               494                                  12.96

                        GG                               604                              1143                                 52.84

                        GA                               46                                 58                                   79.31

 

 

UD = urdolmen, PD = polygonal-dolmen, ED = extended-dolmen, GD = grand-dolmen, GG = passage-grave, GA = gallery-grave.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Figure 13.2. Complex four layer stratigraphy, Kong Svends Høj, Lolland (Dehn et al. 1992:85 Fig. 7).

 

 

Polygonal dolmen, passage-graves, and gallery-graves are the least likely to show evidence of a mound-cover (Table 13.1). Bakker suspects that the smaller passage-graves in Netherland never had mounds, but similar size mounds elsewhere do.

There is  a dearth of interregional information on TRB mound composition. Schuldt  distinguishes cairns from other (undefined) tumuli. Excavation reports, such as those by Hansen (1993a:20,24-25 Fig. 20, 31), provide good insights into the construction of the mound (Fig. 13.2). But it is difficult to form any meaningful interregional comparisons, due to the complexity of the stratigraphy resulting from continued rebuilding and expansion that often lasted right into the Bronze Age, and considerable destruction (ibid.).

The 2411 burial mounds[1] have traditionally been dichotomized into long-mounds and tumuli. Table 13.2 demonstrates that the long-mounds outnumber tumuli, which is surprising, since Schuldt (1972) found that tumuli outnumbered long-mounds in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. There is also a small number of transitional mounds. The term transitional merely refers to a transitional mound form which is neither exactly a long-mound nor a tumulus.[2]

 

 


 

 

The early phases, includ­ing the stockade and the ­trape­zoidal stone enclo­sure were constructed in the EN C.  The internal structures are both paral­lel and perpendicular to the bedding trench. This is similar to the urdolmen in their transitional phase, when the first open dolmen faced in either direction. The later, larger central structure is parallel, like the passage-graves. The original mound was supposedly constructed in two phases.  Its mega­lithic enclosure, as measured from the plan, had an average length of ca. 53 m and a width ranging from 8.09 at the proximal end via 9.95 at the widest portion to 5.39 m at the distal end. This gives it an area of 415 m2. The later megalithic phase is dated to MN I/II. Its dimensions are 66.67:11.90-11.31 m. The area of 774.04 m2 is nearly twice as large as that of the trapezoidal EN C enclosure. Judging from the remains of the megalithic chamber, it may date to the transi­tional phase when poly­gonal-dolmen developed into passage-graves, i.e. ca. 2700-2600 b.c. (3400-3280 B.C.)

 


Figure 13.3.   Tomb evolution at Bygholm Nørremark (after P. Rønne 1979).

 

 

TABLE 13.2

 

Number of traceable mounds by type

 

                                                Long-mounds                           1261

                                                Transitional (Dutch)                    95

                                                Tumuli                                         812

                                                Unclassifiable                            243

 

                                                TOTAL                                                2411

 

This traditional classification has no chronological implications. A small number of these mounds are complex mounds. These include unique types, such as Katterø, Svendborg Amt, Lindhöft 110, and Tan­nenhausen 817.

 

 

TABLE 13.3

 

Dimensions of Polish long-mounds proposed to be among the oldest tombs by Midgley (1992:52)

 

ID. NO.   TOWN                    FORM      µL           WIDTH 1                WIDTH 2            µW                              AREA

 

8228.0     Sarnowo 1               TR           76.25            11.07m                    5.36m                 6.19                            471.99

8237.0     Leíniczowo             TR           72.42              8.71                       1.61                    5.16                            373.69

8245.0     Obalki                     TR           32.24              5.52                       3.58                    3.23                            104.14

8253.0     Wietrzychowice      TR                                11.76 

 

The mounds show relatively little overall consistency in their dimensions, but their orientations range from east northeast to east. L = length, W = width.

 

 

 

 

In spite of the large number of mounds and hundreds of years of their investigation, there are no helpful guidelines for analyzing mounds. In fact the tables given here are the first actual tabulations of mounds covering the whole TRB culture area. Consequently, it seems that no one has as yet determined significant regional or temporal trends in mound dimensions beyond a few speculations already mentioned. Even Midgley only dealt with a small class of mounds, the "earthen long-barrows". She hypothesized that they were the earliest tombs (Table 13.3). Others have argued that rectangular or round mounds were first.

Laux (e.g. 1979a, 1991) suggests that mounds increase in height through time. Schuldt's illustra­tions also seem to indicate an increase in mound height concomitant with an increase in the size of cham­bers and a likely trend to construct chambers closer to the surface. In most cases though, the reporting of mound height is unstandardized and erratic, largely due to rebuilding, destruction etc., that the available data, although recorded in the data base, does not lend itself to meaningful analysis.

 

13.2      Mound and enclosure origin and evolution.

Even if one takes the Polish radiocarbon dates into consideration, one can presently only justify an approximate date of 3250±200 b.c. The first mounds probably were a natural byproduct of digging (Meso­lithic?) burial pits and then using the soil as back fill to cover the interment. In time the resulting mound would have received greater architectural elaboration which no doubt increased in ritual significance, especially when several ancestors came to rest in close proximity under mounds that gradually coalesced into a single more or less unified structure.

In Denmark the Lindebjerg long-mound with its archaic Svaleklindt Group EN A/B pottery (3060±100 b.c./3814±109 B.C.) may serve as example of this process.  Its seems to have grown by accre­tion as new burials were added and covered. The final building stage included all common megalithic features. Barkæer demonstrates a similar evolution (Liversage 1992) and the excavation of Bygholm Nørremark suggests a comparable process.

At ­Byg­holm Nørremark Rønne envisioned several successive stages of construction in which mortuary houses and graves were enclosed by a stockade (Fig. 13.3). The enclosed area was later covered with a trapezoidal mound surrounded by a stone enclosure which retained the same form as the stockade. At an even later stage the mound was enlarged and surrounded by a rectangular enclosure while a primeval passage-grave was being constructed within the mound. Thus Danish long-mounds are thought to have arisen as EN mortuary houses. However, T. Madsen cautions that: Without totally rejecting  the pos­sibility of large mortuary houses, I would suggest that we may  be  dealing with sequentially constructed long barrows (Madsen 1979:315). This seems to be confirmed by the side by side and linear arrangements of urdolmen in rectangular to slightly trapezoidal long-mounds, as well as by the occurrence of multiple passage-graves in long-mounds. Thus the evolution of Bygholm Nørremark shows that the stockade, rather than the houses, provided the outline for the mound and the stone enclosure. The stone enclosure is thus functionally equivalent to the stockade. In this sense it is not just a retaining wall, but also a (symbolic?) barrier that cordons off a long established sacred space.

Sequential mound construction must have been the norm in the beginning throughout the TRB. The EN C long-mound Flintbek LA 3, Schleswig-Holstein, shows a tiny oblong mound, covering a central Konens Høj type grave. The mound was expanded in both directions with three additional graves (Phase 1-4).  A small rectangular mound with enclosure was added, containing the perpendicular oriented Grave F and  Extended-dolmen I-III, followed by a larger, all-encompassing Phase 6 rectangular, fully megalithic enclosure, plus an even larger northeastern rectangular mound/enclosure addition (Phase 7) with large perpendicular  Extended-dolmen IV. The apparently succeeding nearby Long-mound LA 4 exhibits a similar development from central dolmen with stone-circle to axially expanded rectangular mound/enclo­sure (Zich 1992, 1994a, c, 1995a).

In Central Germany sequential mound construction has been shown at Halle-Dölauer Heide Mound 6 (Behrens and Schröter 1980 Fig. 36-42). The tomb is located inside the famous causeway. The first Salzmünde burials (Graves I and II) were said to be covered by village debris. This was followed by the Salzmünde Grave 1 covered by the first "core mound." It was followed by another grave covered by more mound fill. The next major phase was a second core mound with grave. After this several additional graves and more mound fill were added in conjunction with the construction of the trapezoidal mound by the Salzmünde Group and Corded Ware culture. The final mound elevation occurred in yet another Corded Ware burial phase, while still another Corded Ware burial and a Bronze Age grave were inserted later. The final grave was placed in the mound during the Late Bronze Age.

Similarly,  the Baalberge primary grave of the Pohlsberg, Latdorf, Central Germany (ID 6604) was a stone-cist akin to the below surface urdolmen. Along with several additional chambers and other graves, the mound later received a trapezoidal megalithic enclosure. But sequential mound construction is not confined to long-mounds alone. Tumuli, such as Schortewitz, also underwent such changes.

 

 

Figure 13.4. Danish urdolmen with EN C pottery by mound shape. Of  36 dolmen which contained identi­fiable Early Neolithic flasks 18 are in long-mounds, 6 in tumuli, and 12 had no clearly defined mound.

 

 

 

All this should dispel the ever popular Long-house Theory which derives the long-mounds from long-houses. But just in case it doesn't, it should be noted that this naive theory also fails to explain the coexistence of long-mounds and tumuli in the EN (Fig. 13.4).

 

 

TABLE 13.4

 

THE NUMBER OF MOUNDS AND THEIR RESPECTIVE FORMS

 

                                    LONG-MOUNDS                              1261

                                                Rectangular                              490

                                                Trapezoidal                              472

                                                Rhomboidal                                 1

                                                Unknown                                 238

 

                                    TRANSITIONAL                                  95

 

                                    TUMULI                                             812

                                                Oval                                           19

                                                Round                                        76

                                                Stone-circle                              101

                                                None/unknown                         616

 

                                    UNCLASSIFIABLE                            243

                                                Enclosures                                  10

                                      Enclosure+mound                               233

 

                                                TOTAL                                                2411

 

The number of mounds and their respective forms. It should be noted that out of 243 unclassifiable mounds only 10 (4.12%) had no trace of a mound. This means that evidence of an enclosure is highly likely to imply the existence of a mound, even when there is no trace of one. The nearly square enclosure of Gaar­zerhof ID 5004 is counted here as a short long-mound.

 

 

 

 

The available data show only two possible cases where two multi-side-stone dolmen might have existed in a single tumulus.[3] It is almost as rare to find more than one primeval passage-grave in a tumulus.  The early coexistence of long-mounds and tumuli may thus be the result of a functional difference, where long-mounds covered one or more chambers and other graves and the earliest tumuli encompassed a single chamber. If additional burials had to take place in the vicinity of a tumulus, a tumulus would be incorporat­ed in a long-mound, creating a complex mound as described below.

Regarding mound shape, it is logical that as long as the prehistoric architects built small chambers, the form of the mound did not rally matter. This may be yet another reason for the coexistence of round and long-mounds. But as chamber size or passage-length increased mound form became more important and advantages and disadvantages of specific mound shapes became more marked.

Tumuli are especially efficient in containing the large polygonal-dolmen. But some grand-dolmen in Mecklenburg actually forced the architects to stretch the round enclosure into an oval one. A similar process in the West Group stretched nearly round enclosures with a kidney-shape into ever more elongated forms as the passage-graves increased in length. Furthermore, polygonal-dolmen and oval primeval pas­sage-graves are most efficiently created in tumuli, where passage length can readily increase. In fact, such an increase in length is virtually invited by round mounds.

The advantage of the long-mound is that it accommodates the increase in chamber length of paral­lel chambers, such as passage-graves. But long-mounds have disadvantages for the construction of larger axial dolmen. Thus the advent of grand-dolmen caused a dilemma. The only choice was to increase the mound's width or to rotate the chamber. This probably was a major factor leading to the abandonment of the autochthonous grand-dolmen in favor of passage-graves in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.  But the advan­tage of lengthening the chamber sacrifices the easy lengthening of the passage.

In the TRB West Group, where short passages are common, round mounds, possibly under the influence of coexisting long-mounds, evolved into ever longer transitional mounds. In the largest chambers the mounds and enclosures seem to loose their early significance as a separate unit. The mound itself sometimes barely covers the chamber which is almost immediately surrounded by one or two enclosures. Thus at Thuine 874 the inner enclosure practically touches the chamber. This is a clear indication that the "expense" of building ever larger chambers forced an economic decision to reduce the mound and enclo­sure size in proportion to increased chamber size in the West Group. This means that the Dutch type mounds/enclosures together with their passage-graves were designed as a whole unit, as Bakker has argued.

The same evolution may have occurred among the gallery-graves, where the larger chambers occasionally provide evidence of an enclosure close to the chamber. For example at Etteln the suspected enclosure remnant was only about 70 cm from the side wall of the chamber (Günther 1978:233 Fig. 4).

           

13.3      Enclosure shapes

Although mounds are more successfully classifiable by shape than chambers, it remains unclear which, if any form, is the oldest. Furthermore, the mound's shape is usually determined by the enclosure. A likely exception is the grand-dolmen with nearly square enclosure (mean dimensions 9.34:8.40 m) of Gaarzerhof (B46, ID 5004). Schuldt's plan (1972:166 Fig.166) the enclosure covered with a round tumulus. But when mound contours are carefully mapped tumuli, such as Klekkendehøj and Gundsølille show a curious angularity (Fig. 14.1, Hansen 1993a:101 Fig. 101), remotely akin to pyramidal North American Woodland period Mounds.

The number of mounds and their respective enclosure forms are shown in Table 13.4. As a rule the enclosure consists of border stones that form what is sometimes called a curb. It is constructed with the same kind of megaliths used to construct the chambers, even if no megalithic chamber is present within the mound. The resulting  enclosure classification is given in Table 13.5.

The enclosure is seen to function as a retaining wall designed to keep the mound from being eroded (e.g. Schlicht 1979a). Of course, the relationship between the stockade and the megalithic en­closures at Bygholm Nørremerk add a likely sacred function to the megalithic enclosure, no doubt separat­ing a hallowed ground of the other world from its mundane surroundings, setting into motion an evolution of elaborate enclosure designs. Thus the enclosure for the passage-grave  Jordhøj, at Mariager is recon­structed as a platform for offerings (Hansen 1993a:19 Fig. 22). Kong Swendshøj's enclosure is restored as supporting an actual catwalk (Fig. 9.3), and the small enclosure stones together with a second ring of even smaller border stones  are reconstructed as outlining a "paved" catwalk that surrounds the tumulus at the level of the elevated passage entrances of Klekkendehøj on Møn (ibid. p. 14 Fig. 12).

 

 

TABLE 13.5

 

Classification of enclosures

 

                                                 Rectilinear

                                                             Rectangular

                                                                                 Trapezoidal

                                                                                 Rhomboidal

                                                 Circular

                                                             Round

                                                             Oval

                                                 Transitional

                                                             Dutch (Oval/kidney-shaped)

                                                 Complex enclosures

                                                             Side joints

                                                                                 End joints

                                                                                 Divisions

                                                                                 Secondary enclosures

                                                 Double enclosures

                                                             Rectilinear

                                                                        Double Rectangular

                                                                        Double Trapezoidal

                                                             Transitional

                                                                        Dutch

                                                             Circular

 

Unlike the chamber classification, this classification does not follow a specific chronological scheme, although some forms occur only in the EN and some others can be shown to exist only in the MN.

 

 

 

Wooden enclosures are very rare. Trapezoidal ones, presumably similar to Bygholm Nørremark include Stengade I, Langeland, which contains Konens Høj-type graves and EN C pottery. This mildly trapezoidal structure's mean dimensions were approximately µ30.65:2.84 m or 87.5 m2. Half the size of Stengade I is the trapezoidal bedding trench of Teglværksgåde (µ=14.00:2.96 m, 41.44 m2).[4]  In function, form and size they resemble megalithic enclosures and are, therefore, treated in the analysis in the same manner as their megalithic counterparts. Surprisingly, the literature does not mention circular wooden mound enclosures for the TRB.

 

 

TABLE 13.6

 

Frequencies of mounds and enclosures in relation to megalithic chambers

 

TYPE     RE     TR   RO    LN    RD   OV    SC      TU      DU    MN    ??     EN    TOTAL

        </