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A SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF MEGALITHIC TOMBS

15. ORIENTATION AND LOCATION OF MEGALITHIC TOMBS

Maximilian O. Baldia

1993, 1995, 1999-April 25, 2006©
All rights reserved

15.1 Megalithic tombs and celestial alignments

A longstanding basic assumption in anthropology and related fields is that an understanding of old traditions allows the researcher to trace them back in time until even prehistoric phenomena find a plausible explanation. In dealing with megalithic tombs and celestial alignments this approach has unfortunately led to the neo-romantic view, providing an intuitively very appealing perspective, which sometimes achieves a religious quality that borders on mysticism.

This does not mean that the approach should be rejected out-of hand. The systematic use of ethnographic information, historical and linguistic records, mythology, fairy- and folk-tale analysis in conjunction with archaeological data analysis should lead to plausible interpretations of the mysteries surrounding megalithic tombs. Celtic, Germanic and Slavic customs and traditions have survived into historical times. The most prominent customs are feast days known from Celtic literature and traditions. Samuin (Samhain) celebrated the winter solstice (December 21-22). Beltane (German: Walpurgisnacht) celebrated Midsummer's Night by lighting huge bonfires.

These and other customs held in common among various European cultures have caused some antiquarians, astronomers and archaeologists to believe that they may go back to the Neolithic times. For this reason such customs have been used to explain observable facts about megalithic tomb architecture. Thus Hadingham (1985:25-26) points out that the astronomer Sir Lockyer/Lock'yer (1906) concluded that:

prehistoric people had celebrated the same solar festivals as had eventually passed into the folklore of the Celts some two thousand years later; to commemorate these events, stones were lined up in the direction of the sun or stars that rose on the appropriate day. Lockyer supposed that a class of astronomer priests had once controlled the whole of prehistoric Britain, "on whom the early people depended for guidance in all things, not only economic, but of religious, medicinal and superstitious value."

More recently the British-American astronomer Hawkins reiterated this view:

Rowan, the mountain ash, was used on May Day, and the sacred mistletoe at midwinter and midsummer. ... Ethnologists linked the ceremonies with the druids, and the Beltane Fires were taken to be a representation of the druidic Celtic sun-god. Usually there were a pair of fires, and people (and animals) passed between them. Fires were lighted across the country on the night of midsummer's eve, midwinter, and at the spring and fall equinox. ... Fires were lighted on four other dates,[1] when the sun's declination was 16°.3, north or south. This declination fixed the calendar dates one-eighth of a year after the solstices and equinoxes, approximately on February 4, May 6, August 8, and November 8 on the Gregorian calendar. The year was therefore divided into eight approximately equal portions. These divisions are very close to the solar alignment dates found in the megalithic structures by Thom[2], and by Lockyer before him. Since megaliths predate the Celtic Druids, the Beltane Fires might be something handed down from the darkness of prehistory.[3]

Although some of the neo-romantic research may have read more into the data than is prudent, knowledge of these long-lived traditions gives rise to speculations about the orientation of megalithic tombs that lead to astonishing discoveries. For example, O'Kelly (Roy, 1987: 35-36), the modern excavator of Newgrange, recalls:

There had been a tradition at Newgrange, the locals would tell you ... that on a certain day of the year the sun would shine into the tomb, and the time suggested ... was midsummer.[4] ... But in midsummer the sun was almost vertically overhead ... so the possibility occurred to me to look at this in mid winter, when the sun would be rising on the southernmost point on the local horizon ... I went, I think, in 1969, to see for myself. ... First, a thin pencil of light, which gradually widened to a band about seventeen centimeters wide, and slowly swung across the floor (of the chambers passage) and gradually was reduced as the ray began to be cut off. Fifteen minutes after this whole process begins, it disappears. ... These investigations made it quite clear that the whole thing was a deliberate attempt to catch the sunlight at this particular time which ... was the winter solstice, the end of the old year, the next day the new year begins, a time when right around the world there has always been a midwinter festival. We are still celebrating Christmas, with the day changed a little bit, the whole thing Christianised (sic).

The winter solstice is the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. Its counterpart is the summer solstice (June 21-22). Hadingham has claimed that, just as among the Zuni Indians, the winter solstice seems to have been more significant in Northern Europe's prehistoric past, because similar winter solstice tomb orientations are known throughout the British Isles and Brittany. For example, the passage of Maes Howe (ca. 2500 A.D.) in the Scottish Orkney Islands is oriented toward the midwinter sunset (Hadingham 1985: 53-54). The midwinter sunset also illuminates a decorated stone inside the chamber of Dowth. Dowth and the equally impressive tumulus of Knowth are located near Newgrange. Yet unlike Dowth, Knowth's two passages-graves are positioned so that the eastern passage receives the rays from the rising sun, the western passage receives it from the setting sun of the equinox. Mitchell (1989: 95) adds that:

another equinoctial mound is Cairn T, one of a large group on the Loughcrew hills to the west of Dublin, which is spectacularly lit by the sun as it reaches the bi-annual midpoint of its cycle. A stone at the back of its chamber is carved with a rayed sun symbol which is picked out by the thin ray of light, and as the sun moves across the sky, the beam passes along the stone and onto its neighbor, illuminating symbols in turn. The Impression is a finger of light, spelling out a message from a forgotten language of symbols.

Solar orientations are also known from the continent. The French chamber of Gavrinnis in Brittany is lit by the midwinter sunrise. Even more surprising is the fact that the chamber is also aligned toward the southernmost moonrise. A bright white quartzite stone midway in the passage seems to reflect the entering light.

British mounds are said to capture moonlight also, but Hadingham points out that at least for the passage-graves of the Clava cairns (ca. 3000 B.C.) at Iverness actual observation showed that the horizon makes the moon invisible from within the chambers (Hadingham 1985: 63-64). My own observations, shortly before the winter solstice in December of 1996 indicate that these tombs, which are structurally dissimilar to TRB tombs, sit on a riverbank, in a valley lined by hills on both sides. Their entrances are facing away from the river. They are at an angle to the modern road, pointing to a low spot on the horizon. However, at the time of this visit, not a single heavenly body was visible from the inside or the outside of the tombs throughout the entire night.

Table 15.1

DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS OF CHAMBER AND ENTRANCE ORIENTATION
	CHAMBER		ENTRANCE DEGREES
	ORIENTATION	ORI. EAST	ENTRANCE DEGREES
N OF CASES	1253	1253	786
MINIMUM MAXIMUM RANGE MEAN VARIANCE STANDARD DEV STD. ERROR SKEWNESS(G1) KURTOSIS(G2) C.V. MEDIAN	1.000 16.000 15.000 6.555 19.897 4.461 0.126 0.699 -0.648 0.681 5.000	1.000 8.000 7.000 4.848 5.033 2.244 0.063 -0.174 -1.110 0.463 5.000	1.000 360.000 359.000 152.001 3617.362 60.145 2.145 0.229 1.044 0.396 156.000
TOTAL OBSERVATIONS: 2385

Chamber orientation is in 1/16 (22.5°) increments of 360° where 1=NNE, 2=NE, 3=ENE and 4=E etc. The first column of data lists chambers by orientation of the greater width (for trapezoidal to egg-shaped forms). Surprisingly the median orientation is the same as in the second column. The second column is standardized by providing only the eastern orientation from 1° to 180° east of north, regardless of chamber form. As in the first data column, the median orientation is 5, i.e. ESE or 127.5°. Entrances are listed in degrees south of north.

Based on this evidence, it can be concluded that many but not all tombs west of the TRB culture area were aligned with celestial events. Such alignments presumably mark periodically recurring celestial events that may be used to predict particularly significant and regularly occurring calendar dates, such as the beginning of seasons. This predictability would be important for planting or harvesting crops and ceremonies associated with these seasonal cycles. Such non-random events include solstices, the cycles of the moon, the seasonal appearance of particular stars or star systems, as well as occurrence of eclipses.

If TRB megalithic tomb orientations were determined by such predictable celestial events, only a few specific, non-random orientations would be expected, particularly in the Neolithic, when telescopes and other aids for meticulous observations and detailed record keeping beyond an oral tradition were missing. Further limiting the choices of suitable alignments and thus decreasing randomness of possible alignments should have been the cloudy nordic sky (Ellegård 1981). Finally, cultural selection, which by definition reduces the myriad of possible choices to a few, culturally specific and socially significant phenomenon should limit tomb orientation even further, creating a consistent pattern.

However, no consistent alignment pattern was discovered by van Giffen who published the most careful measurements of orientation of the megalithic tombs in Netherland as early as 1925/1927. Similarly, Ashbee (1970) recorded a broad range of orientations for British earthen long-barrows.

Previous analyses of TRB mounds and chambers orientations indicated that they were for all intents and purposes random (Baldia 1985b). It, therefore, seemed that the window in the passage of the Newgrange, aligned to the rising sun, was an exception. Thus, it was concluded that in most cases it would be difficult to distinguish an accidental alignment from a deliberate one as illustrated by Blakeslee's remarks (Ellegård 1981:115): The problem of false positives in astroarchaeology is endemic; recently three solar alignments were found for a window in a Hopi site - a window constructed by the U.S. National Park Service in 1933 ... The skepticism persisted, even though Swedish archaeologist had noted a predominant orientation in their tombs. It was not until the final draft of this work that the orientations of mounds and chambers, as well as the entrances were graphed. The results were unexpected. They demonstrate that entrance/passage orientations are not directly linked to mound and chamber orientations (Table 15.1). Figure 15.1 demonstrates a predominant southern orientation with several other significant peaks.

Figure 15.1. Entrance orientation density distribution for 786 chambers in degrees with superimposed smoothed normal curve. The horizontal axis represents 1-360 degrees east of north.

As it turns out, the average orientation of 786 entrances is 152° and the median is 156.° Both statistics are surprisingly close to southeast (157.5°). Major peaks occur in the southwest and the east. There is also a small general increase in the numbers of entrances open to the north to north-northeast. Orientations toward west southwest and possibly east-northeast appear not to be common.

Since no one provided entrance orientations in degrees for TRB chambers, the 786 measurements presented here are taken from tomb floor plans of various sources published over the past 150 years. There may be considerable differences in accuracy. Still, the weight of the evidence suggests that some celestial alignments similar to those proposed for the megalithic tombs of France and the British Isles are quite plausible. Furthermore, it may now be stated that some of the most likely solar and moon alignments proposed for Stonehenge and Callanish probably occur in TRB tombs.

Figure 15.2. Chamber orientation from 1° to 180° in eight increments of 22.5°. The orientations of 1253 chambers has no strong pattern.

Table 15.2

DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS OF ENCLOSURE ORIENTATIONS

N OF CASES

MINIMUM

MAXIMUM

RANGE

MEAN

VARIANCE

STANDARD DEV

STD. ERROR

SKEWNESS(G1)

KURTOSIS(G2)

C.V.

MEDIAN

ORIENTATION

EASTING

646

1.000

16.000

15.000

5.822

15.812

3.976

0.156

1.184

0.562

0.683

4.000

646

1.000

8.000

7.000

4.647

4.170

2.042

0.080

0.048

-0.792

0.439

4.000

TOTAL OBSERVATIONS: 1157

Descriptive statistics of 646 enclosure orientations out of 1157 recorded mounds/enclosures. Orientation is in 1/16 (22.5°) increments of 360°. The first column of data lists orientation of the greater width (for trapezoidal to Egg-shaped forms). The second data column lists the standardized orientation east of north from 1° to 180°.

The range of latitude for TRB tombs is about the same as that of the latitudes between Stonehenge and Callanish, so that one must expect TRB entrances to fluctuate between the azimuthal directions for some of the sun and moon positions calculated for the two British sites (Hawkins 1986:184, 188 Fig. 1, 3). This means that the statistically most likely entrance orientations would be facing the Midsummer moonrise and moonset, the Midwinter sunset, the equinox moonrise, sunrise and moonset. The Midwinter sunset may also have been important. This is endorsed by Swedish research, which shows that moon orientations dominate in Skåne and various sun alignments are observable in Falbygden (e.g. Bägerfeldt 1993:164).

The gallery-grave Züschen/Lohne may also support a possible connection with the moon and sun. On May 27-28, 1994 the nearly full moon light up north side of the chamber. Several bovine designs, recently filled with chalk, reflected the moonlight so that they were clearly visible even after the sunset (ca. 11pm). The moonlit side contains the so-called dolmen-goddess, a somewhat oval stylized face (Kappel 1978:16 Fig. 10). The view of the slightly oval, nearly full moon, as viewed from the chamber, looked like a disfigured face that seemed to cry out in agony. Perhaps it was only an over stimulated imagination, but there seemed to be a similarity with the face. Ocular designs on TRB MN pots, occasionally taking on a face-like design, also have been liked with the moon (e.g. Bägerfeldt 1993:160-166). The early sunrise at Züschen provided another surprise, because even though the chamber is sunk into the side of a hill, the sun shone right through the porthole, creating a V-shaped beam of light that fell on the south wall of the chamber (ca. 6am).

In addition, the passage grave at Kong Svends Høy, on the Island of Møn in Denmark, points to a bright object during part of the night, about a week before the summer equinox. Not only that, but I also observed that the strangely arranged, huge enclosure stones at proximal end worked like a gun sight. When viewed from the distal end, the largest, centrally located enclosure stone at the proximal end aimed almost at exactly at the full moon with its top. In the morning, the sun rose behind the mound, opposite the entrance.

The opposite is true of the Hvissehøj, a complex passage grave in a tumulus in Northwest Jylland (Chapter 11). Here I observed during mid morning in September 1997 that the sun entered not only the main chamber, but also the odd second and even the third post-chamber.

There is an added benefit to the discovery of celestial orientations. It explains the development of numerous, oddly oriented, angled passages, and may have been the impetus behind the widespread use development of passage-grave architecture.

However, my not exactly systematic effort to test the statistical results in the field, suggest that not all entrances and passages pointed to a celestial body, because in some instances the view is blocked by a nearby obstruction, such as a hill.

Unlike the entrance orientation, the orientation of the chambers shows no strong patterning (Fig. 15.2). There may be a slight preference for orientations facing south, followed by east and east southeast, but this may in part be attributable to a tendency in some sources, especially in some of the older literature, for rough estimates of orientation favoring cardinal points. The lack of a definitive pattern in chamber orientation is echoed in the orientation of 646 rectilinear to oval enclosures (Table 15.2, Fig. 15.3). This means entrances and passages were most likely designed to align with a celestial body or event, while chambers and enclosures were oriented by a different criterion. This criterion, which naturally also influenced the entrance orientation to some extent, is, at least in part, the topography.

Figure 15.3. Enclosure orientation from 1° to 180° in eight increments of 22.5°. The orientations have no strong pattern and largely mirrors the orientation of the chambers, even though dolmen without entrances and enclosures of "unchambered" mounds are included.

15.2 Tomb orientation and location vis-à-vis topography, soil type and village location.

A vague connection between megalithic tomb orientations and the topography can be verified for many regions. In 1970 Ashbee summarized the orientation of long barrows and provided solid evidence for a relationship between the mounds and the topography for some, but not all parts of Great Britain.

Similar tomb alignments with topography can be demonstrated for the Funnel Beaker tombs. Krause and Schoetensack, it may be recalled, suggested a relationship of tombs with the plateau of the Altmark a century ago. On the island of Rügen von Hagenow mapped 12 tombs aligned east-west in a straight line on top of a long hill located between the towns of Dummertewitz and Preez on his 1829 map. A few other possible topographic alignments can also be spotted on the same map, but in Rügen, as in Great Britain, many tombs have no obvious topographic alignment at all, while gallery-graves supposedly largely follow the river valleys of the highlands.

Table 15.3 VILLAGES, TOMBS AND SOIL TYPE IN KR. UELZEN

SOIL TYPE FERTILITY AREA TYPE % VILLAGE /km¨ TOMBS /km¨ CLUSTERS /km¨

I LOESS HIGH-MEDIUM 120 8.57 1 0.01 4 0.03 4 0.03

Ia LOESS/SAND MEDIUM-LOW 50 3.57 3 0.06 2 0.04 2 0.04

II GROUND MORAINE MEDIUM 500 35.71 5 0.01 41 0.08 23 0.05

III SAND MOSTLY LOW 690 49.29 4 0.01 23 0.03 18 0.03

OTHER NONE 40 2.86 0 0.00 2 0.05 2 0.05

TOTAL 1400 100.00% 13 0.01/km¨ 72 0.05/km¨ 49 0.03/km¨

TOTAL N OF TOMBS ca. 250 or 0.17/km¨

Table 15.4 TOMBS, VILLAGES AND SOIL TYPE IN THE RIVER ZONE OF KR. UELZEN

SOIL TYPE FERTILITY AREA TYPE % VILLAGE /km¨ TOMBS /km¨ CLUSTER /km¨

I LOESS HIGH-MEDIUM 8 2.45 1 0.12 2 0.25 0 0.00

Ia LOESS/SAND MEDIUM-LOW 3 0.92 2 0.67 0 0.00 0 0.00

II GROUND MORAINE MEDIUM 120 36.81 5 0.04 16 0.13 8 0.67

III SAND MOSTLY LOW 190 58.28 4 0.02 16 0.08 4 0.02

OTHER NONE 5 2.86 0 0.00 1 0.20 2 0.40

326 100.00 12 35 - 14 -

Location of tombs, tomb clusters, and villages in the river zone of Kr. Uelzen, Lower Saxony, in relation to soil types.

Laux observed that orientation differs in northeastern Lower Saxony according to two kinds of landscapes. The western landscape, which is closer to the North Sea, finds the tombs located in groups concentrated in the sandy uplands of the coastal plain, above the marshes. In the eastern landscape, primarily known as the Lüneburg Heath, the tombs are largely located in the meadows near streams. He noted that the long-mounds west of the Ilmenau River are oriented east-west, while those east of the river are oriented north-south. This difference is probably due to the lines of communication discussed later. Schirnig mapped some 250 tombs in this region (Kr. Uelzen) in relation to soil fertility (Schirnig 1979b).

Analysis of Schirnig's map shows that 12 of 13 (92%) of the village sites are located in the river zone, which is defined as an area of 500 m on either side of the streams and creeks (Tables 15.3-15.4). Some 35 (48.61%) of the single tombs and 14 (33.33%) of the tomb clusters are located in the river zone, which is 23.29% of the total county area of ca. 1400 km2. This means that there are significantly more tombs within ca. 500 m of either side of the streams than in the rest of the county.

Within the river zone single tombs achieve the highest density on the most fertile loess soil (0.25 per km2). A similar proportion of single tombs for this soil type is found in the rest of the county. But there are no tomb clusters in this high fertility zone, or the loess/sand soil of medium fertility. The loess/sand soil makes up only 3.57% of the entire county and only 0.92% of the river zone. The highest proportion of village-related sites per km2 is located on this loess/sand.

Table 15.5 GERMAN AND POLISH TOMB ELEVATION ABOVE SEA LEVEL

Number of tombs ............................1184

Average tomb elevation ...................... 46.46 m±35.73

1δ ........................................10.71 to 82.21

2δ ........................................ 0 to 117.96

3δ ........................................ 0 to 153.71

The tomb clusters, on the other hand, achieve their highest density on the ground moraine, which must have offered easy access to the erratics used in tomb construction - a fact that is supported by Gehl (1972) and Bakker (1982, Bakker and Groenman-van Waateringe 1988) in other regions. But the ground moraine is also the second most common soil type in Kr. Uelzen. It has medium to low fertility and covers roughly 36% of the river zone and the county as a whole. Outside the river zone, the ground moraine also has the highest single tomb density. It must, therefore, be concluded that there is a dichotomy in location. The tombs' location must be partly the result of easily available, nearby building material, while village location seems to be determined by the need for a constant water source and perhaps easily arable land. Nonetheless, the overall distribution, to be discussed later, suggests an intricate communication network.

On the whole, it is difficult to control for the specific local environmental factors that influence tomb distribution. Topographic factors must be treated with care. A rise in sea level and postglacial rebound has changed land elevation. Coast lines, lake levels, marshes etc. have changed.[5] In some parts soil types have been changed through redeposition of fertile soils from undrained areas to well-drained and depleted soils. This process is called Plackendungung or Esche in German. To complicate matters even more, Goldman (1981 and personal communication 1981) suggests that many of the Mecklenburg lake and marsh districts are uninhabitable without artificial drainage. Hoika (1986) felt that the Oldenburg Graben was a barrier. Bakker (1976:69, 1991 Fig. 2) mapped the marsh lands and prehistoric coastal areas near the North Sea and southwestern most Schleswig-Holstein. However, even those wetlands attracted habitation and were part of the TRB communication network, as the location of the Heveskesklooster grand-dolmen demonstrates.

Figure 15.4. Neolithic coastlines of Denmark and northern Schleswig-Holstein at ca. 4000 B.C. (Bägerfeldt 1993:218 after Brøndsted 1957).

The elevation above sea level for Dutch sites has been mapped along with soil types (Bakker 1980a, 1982, 1983; Bakker and Groenman-van Waateringe 1988). The present analysis of 1184 megalithic tombs, including gallery-graves, from Germany and Poland yields an average elevation is 46.46 m above sea level (Table. 15.5). The lowest tombs are located on the coast of Schleswig-Holstein where several are at or below current sea level especially on the Island of Sylt.[6] Sylt, Amrum, and adjacent Danish islands were still part of the North Sea coast (Fig. 15.4). However, islands, such as Helgoland, had to be reached by boat and even tombs, such as those located near Wanna and Großen Ahlen in the Elbe-Weser Triangle, where in contact with the North Sea (Behre 1979:200), while they appear to be inland now. Several of the islands in the Baltic were much larger and more closely connected with each other. They must have been extremely important communication links during the Neolithic. Long distance sea travel between Pomerania and Skåne via Bornholm are existed at least since the EN (Fig. 15.5).

Figure 15.5. Possible sea route between southern Sweden, Bornholm and Poland as indicated by EN TRB pottery (squares) found in the Baltic Sea (after Nielsen and Nielsen 1990:55 Fig. 1, tomb location after Hansen 1993).

Many tombs were located near marshes. This includes the Swedish passage-graves of Falbygden, the tombs in the lake district of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, and many tombs in Poland[7] and the western tombs in Netherland (Bakker and Groenman-van Waateringe1988). Others tombs are found in marshes, suggesting a gradual increase in the water level and a decrease of available land in the MN and LN. (Behre 1979: 200).

In Jutland and adjacent areas, the TRB avoided certain highlands. In the German highlands the tombs cling to the slopes near the river valleys. The highest tomb there, a gallery-grave, is 322 m above sea level. U. Fischer observed a similar tendency to hug the slopes for TRB tombs in the forest of Wötz (Forst Wötz, Gem. Leetze, Kr. Salzwedel) in the northwestern Altmark and pointed out that:

There are obvious topographic rules (for the location of megalithic tombs). The highest elevations are always avoided. The tombs lie on the slopes ...[8]

He suggested that the tomb location is related to roads. La Cour and Mathiassen observed that the tomb location in West Jutland followed the boundary between loam and sand, avoiding wet places for the same reason (Bakker 1976: 64). Schlicht (1979a: 44) described the topographic relationship of large dolmen and primeval passage-graves in tumulus without enclosure for northwestern Lower Saxony by stating:

It is conspicuous, that all these small (tree capstone) chambers are situated on prominent points in the landscape, on tongues of land or fords, across which the trade routes led.

Her observations also hold true for parts of Jutland, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and even Poland.

15.3 Megalithic tomb location and territories

The location of megalithic tombs will be treated on two levels: the location of individual tombs and the location of entire tomb groups or so-called cemeteries. Popular explanations regarding individual tombs and tomb groups focus on three subjects:

1. A Tomb functions as a central place,

2. Tomb groups or clusters define tribal define a chiefly territory,

3. Tombs form borders between rival territories.

15.3.2 Tomb functions as a central place

The explanation that an individual tomb functions as a central place and perhaps as territorial marker is a popular, but ill-defined assumption. It received some semblance of scientific validity in the 1970's and early 80's through Renfrew's use of Thiessen polygons, which were drawn around the few surviving megalithic tombs of the West Salisbury Plain in Great Britain to demonstrate the existence of tribal or chiefly territories. The whole principle rests on the assumption that each tomb is a central place or territorial marker.

The Central Place Model is not new. In fact it is based on ideas current among German geographers in the 19th century. Its definitive articulation was presented in 1932 when the German scholar Christaller (1893-1969) completed his dissertation at the University of Erlangen. Chritaller's views were primarily stimulated by the theories of German spatial economists and settlement geographers Alfred Weber, Kohl, von Thünen, and Gardmann. Hagget (1972:286) defines central places as follows:

Central places are broadly synonymous with towns that serve as the centers for regional communities by providing them with central goods like tractors and central services, like hospital treatments. ... Higher order centers stock a wide array of goods and services; lower order centers a smaller range ... Complementary regions describe the areas served by each central place. They exist for both higher and lower order centers and are defined by town-country relationships. Such regions differ according to the order of goods, but they may overlap with other complementary regions. The regions for higher order goods are large; those for lower order goods are small. ... Christaller defined the centrality of an urban center as the ratio between the services provided and the local needs of the inhabitants. Towns with high centrality would supply many services per inhabitant, and vice versa.

One must ask why this definition should also be applicable to a Neolithic economy. According to most archaeologists Neolithic economy is based on a barter system. Furthermore, why should it apply particularly to megalithic tombs, which unlike towns are not usually thought of as providing goods and services. Therefore, they do not necessarily need to display the same location pattern of cities and towns, which are the development of a modern market economy. Apparently these major socioeconomic and conceptual differences never addressed were addressed. Renfrew's use of central place spatial analysis of megalithic tombs, using the Thiessen polygons and similar approaches, should therefore raise serious doubt. Three such doubts spring to mind immediately.

First, several tombs of the West Salisbury Plain are found in groups of two or even three tombs.[9] The polygons destroy that relationship. In fact, all the tombs together may form a single, unified tomb group, because none are more than 2 km distant from the next.

Second, the tombs form linear alignments that cross the countryside as if by design. This is especially the case with the clustered tombs 18, 23, 21, 19, and 20, as well as the less closely linked ones. The possibility that they are part of some kind of communication link, or even lined a road as suggested for TRB tombs, was never entertained.

Third, even if some tombs could have been central places others could have been subordinate places. The likelihood that some tombs were more important than others needs to be addressed if one takes this approach seriously. Related to this is the assumption that all tombs were in use at the same time, a problem which Renfrew himself noted.

The problem with Renfrew's approach is further exacerbated by the distribution of the Neolithic long barrows of Dorset and Wiltshire (Renfrew 1973, Fig. 2). In this region, the large number of tombs prohibits the use of Thiessen polygons entirely. Of course, Renfrew must have noticed this dilemma, for he himself abandoned the use of the polygons for this region (see below). Unfortunately, Central Place Theory found many uncritical disciples in spite of this fact.

One such disciple is Darvill who analyzed the court cairns and passage-graves in Ireland. Typically, he drew a polygon around each known court cairn, regardless of its location and association with its neighbors (Darvill 1979 Fig. 4). The resulting extraordinary and unnatural differences in polygon size, common to this form of spatial analysis, was explained away in the following less than scientific manner (ibid. p. 331):

There is a close but not regular distribution of sites (cairns). Evidence for this is in the manifestation of boundary pressure exerted by the inhabitants to maintain a certain minimum area, presumably containing minimum requirements. This would produce an uneven distribution of area sizes, as centers would be closer to the best land. If a market economy, ranked hierarchy or other outside trade network were at all developed one might expect a more regular territorial area. The uneven territories would suggest a territory generated and maintained by the living population for its own survival.

Yet Darvill never provides data about the relationship of agricultural soil quality, carrying capacity etc. and the distribution of court cairns to substantiate the kinds of minimum requirements he envisions. Quantitative evidence for economic activities, which could provide evidence for the relative importance of agriculture, animal husbandry, hunting, fishing, and gathering and the relationship to the tombs are also not provided. This suggests that the concept of boundary pressure is nothing more than a circular argument derived from the unnatural and inherent problems associated with Thiessen polygons, which by their mathematical definition would be smaller in the center of a cluster than at that cluster's edges.

To make matters worse, he rejects the existence of a market economy and social ranking based on negative archaeological evidence, i.e. he argues that the total number of different artifact types (is) pretty small (ibid. p. 325). Apparently it never occurred to him that this opinion might describe the state of archaeology, rather than the economy of the court cairn builders.

Regarding his argument that the cairn builders had a segmentary (tribal) social organization, Darvill himself is forced to admit: Unfortunately, we do not have the evidence from settlement sites conclusively to endorse the recognition of small functioning groups (ibid. p. 319), which he believes to be small farm steads. The evidence for such farm steads is based on the excavation of a mere two (local?) Irish sites and three across the Sea in England.

Furthermore, Darvill notes that the pottery in the court cairns is characteristically of the Grimstone Lyles Hill series, which has a wide spread distribution in Ireland, Scotland and Eastern England (ibid. p. 314). This should have suggested to him that he was dealing with a relatively complex socioeconomic organization that was able to stay in contact by land and sea. Many of the tombs are concentrated on the coast, but others form strings or chains that connect the coastal tomb clusters at opposite coasts clear across Ireland. Thus, one could expect that a sophisticated communication network existed in the British Islands, similar tothose of the Denmark, where barrow roads connecting harbors have been suggested for decades (S. Müller 1904, Mathiassen 1948).

Given the problems associated with the above-mentioned explanations for the location of individual tombs, it goes without saying that individual megalithic tombs probably did not function as central places from which the territory of chiefdoms can be determined. This is not only the case in the British Isles, but also in the TRB. For the TRB Bakker applied Renfrew's approach to the tombs in Netherland and Renfrew (1980) did the same for German tombs. But the assumption that the tombs represent central places, has failed its test (Fig. 16.1).[10]

The present analysis agrees with the conclusions of Hoika and Bakker. Bakker and Groenman van Waateringe (1988:143) proposed that social factors were the sole determinants for the distribution of its settlements, hunebeds (megalithic tombs) and inhumations without aboveground monuments (earth/flat graves) of Netherland. It was concluded that tombs were preferably located within less than 400 m from the available erratic boulders on loamy sands. They further connected tomb alignments with the topography and prehistoric roads.

As early as 1982 Bakker had applied Renfrew's approach of using polygons to determine the territorial boundaries to which tombs might be related. The result clearly showed that the boundaries were meaningless, or rather, that the tombs were not centers of territories. Renfrew's Thiessen polygons were addressed by Bakker and Groenman-van Waateringe (1988:143). The still found to be less than useful.

The tombs are thinly spread in the west and the polygons seem to coincide with the peat bogs there. But in the northern zone ... six known hunebeds are neatly arranged 5.9 to 7.0 km apart, on average 6.2 km from each other ... Several (tombs) of the Hondsrug are meticulously aligned suggesting location on straight roads. these alignments ... are often quite incompatible with any Thiessen polygon arrangements (ibid. 1988:149). Yet the Renfrew game, as Bakker called the approach did not end with an analysis of individual tombs. It has also been applied to tomb groups.

15.3.2 Tomb groups or clusters define the territory of chiefdoms

The conjecture that tomb groups or clusters define the territory of chiefdoms is also attributable to Renfrew. Central Place Theory apparently did not account for the distribution of the neolithic long-mounds of Dorset and Wiltshire, thus Renfrew came up with a new explanation (Renfrew 1973 Fig. 2), which seems to suggest that causewayed camps rather than individual tombs or even tomb groups, functioned as central places. His real conclusion, somewhat lost in the rather speculative 1973 article should, therefore, have been that the location of causewayed camps combined with related tomb groups could define the location of tribal or chiefly territories. This is in effect what can be demonstrated for Kr. Uelzen.

In spite of Renfrew's sudden switch from tombs to causewayed camps, the uncritical use of Thiessen polygons, drawn around arbitrarily defined tomb clusters was accepted by archaeologists interested in the spatial distribution of megalithic tombs. The result was the same as in the case with individual tombs. Tomb clusters do not fit neatly into the polygons. Again this can be demonstrated with Darvill's 1979 research, and his method of dealing with the Irish passage-graves.

Darvill (1978 Fig. 10) illustrates what happens when one uses Thiessen polygons to determine political boundaries based on tomb groups, i.e. groups of Irish passage-graves, which are thought to be later than the court cairns. Discovering a five- or six-level pyramidal hierarchy of centers, he is forced to reject the pattern developed by a rank-size analysis of the tomb groups, because this would be a similar pattern to that of the Roman Empire. He, therefore, rightly concludes that the picture is possibly confused and exaggerated by the fact that a ritual structure ... (because of) its very complex nature may be different from a political or social ... structure (Darvill 1978:322).

Due to this conclusion, he notes that the larger centers lie on a line. In this case he is not referring to individual tombs, but rather to groups or cemeteries containing a number of close by passage-graves. This linear pattern would not have surprised him if he would have observed, that the lines or chains of tombs cross the whole of Northern Ireland, as if to indicate the shortest possible roads or communication lines from coast to coast. In fact, the distribution pattern of the passage-graves in Darvill's Fig. 10 is even more linear than that of the court cairns, suggesting perhaps a more established and rationalized a communication system that may have found expression in a road and water transportation system which was already approximated by the earlier court cairns.

Since Darvill was preoccupied with his effort to determine territories, rather than establishing lines of communication, he was forced to fall back on Thiessen polygons and the traditional argument of population movement and migration as proposed in 1938. This is a rather unexpected turn of events, because the author's introduction condemns the resistance to his form of spatial analysis in traditional archaeology.

Due to this turn of events, he concludes that the passage-graves indicate a two-level socio-political organization and adds that it is evident from Fig. 10 that many of the barrows (80%?) lie on or near the boundary of the territory. ... By adjusting the lines formed by the barrows, no doubt a more realistic picture of the territories could be produced (Darvill 1978:324).

In the Funnel Beaker culture area the use of Thiessen polygons has created similar dilemmas. This is illustrated in Sweden by the Falbygden's passage-grave area of northern Västergötland (Bakker and Groenman-van Waateringe 1988 Fig. 10.5, Kælas 1981 Fig. 10). The area still contains 240 of some 290 known tombs in an area of 500 km², i.e. nearly two tombs per square kilometer. As in Ireland, many tombs wind up right on the boundary lines of the polygons. In fact, only one tomb group, located on the west shore of a lake between the polygon of Karleby and that of Dimbo, forms a truly self-contained group. All others touch or cross the boundaries of the polygons. Even worse, many tombs are not even enclosed by complete polygons. Here too, the obvious existence of many continuous strings or chains of tombs could have been more economically explained by hypothesizing a prehistoric road network. Thus it must be concluded that neither individual tombs nor tomb clusters can be used to define the boundaries of chiefdoms.

15.3.3 The tombs as territorial boundaries

The notion that the tombs themselves form a territorial boundary goes back to the 8^th century, when prehistoric mounds were used as boundary markers (Sippel 1980:138). Most importantly, it is known that thousands of artificial (non-sepulchral) tumuli were erected as boundary markers during the Middle Ages (ibid. pp. 139-40). The Boundary Theory, therefore, seems to have no prehistoric basis, but it is still proposed as a possible explanation of tomb location by several archaeologists. Evidently, the Boundary Theory has not been applied to actual tomb distributions and one can, therefore, only provide the views of Hoika 1986 and personal opinion.

The boundary concept is fundamentally different from that of a territorial marker. The territorial marker theory suggests that a semi-nomadic society, using slash and burn agriculture or cattle breeding, marked ownership of its territory by constructing megalithic tombs on its (newly?) acquired land. If this society built tombs in different locations through time, this would result in local tomb clusters or groups. However, it seems rather unlikely that such clusters would form the observable and rather prevalent string- or chain-like distribution of tombs noted above.

If tombs had been used to mark territorial boundaries, i.e. actually formed the borders of complementary regions; long chains of tombs would not be unexpected. Such chains are known from all regions of the Funnel Beaker culture area. Occasionally the chains intersect other chains, suggesting that territories could have been completely surrounded by such tomb boundaries. Yet, there seems to be no reasonably sized area that has ever been completely encircled by tombs.

Perhaps the only well documented modern data for territorial boundaries marked by megalithic tombs was published by Hoika for the tombs on both sides of the Oldenburg Graben of eastern Schleswig-Holstein. Hoika (1986:201) concluded that:

It is likely that the Johannisbeck, a river that could only be crossed in a few places, formed the division between two (TRB) communities, so that the tombs were erected in their border areas. Something similar may have occurred in the (TRB) communities of Seegalendorf, Gemeinde Gremersdorf (Fig. 7), and near Neukirchen (Fig. 6), where the tombs appear to be located on the edge of a large number of settlement and individual find sites.

The Oldenburg Graben was no doubt a barrier and the suggestion of tomb boundaries is intriguing (Hoika 1986:193-94 Fig. 7-8). Although dismissed by Hoika, the argument for a limited connection between old roads and their association with megalithic tombs is scientifically testable and, therefore, will be discussed later.

15.4 Related Links

Central and North European Neolithic Chronology with summaries of individual cultures

Neolithic/Copper Age Link Index: Links to News Bulletins, Articles, Site Reports, Databases, etc. about the Neolithic/Copper Age in Europe.

Megalithic Tomb Index: Scientific database of 5000 North and Central European Long-Mounds (Long-Barrows), Tumuli, and Megalithic Tombs, Including Gallery-graves.

Please send comments or questions to Max Baldia.

[1] Frazer (e.g. 1959: 695-738) actually documents a much larger series of European fire-festivals including lantern fires, Easter fires etc.

[3] G. Hawkins 1973: 275-276. (References within the quote were added).

[4] Note that the location of the passage in Newgrange was not known until about 1699 (e.g. Roy 1986).

[5] The local effects of these changes are described.e.g. Behre 1979, Hoika 1971, Klug et al. 1974, F. Voss et al. 1978.

[7] The long-mounds of Sarnowo are in the immediate vicinity of a marsh.

[9] Renfrew 1973 Fig. 1, Tombs 12 and 13, 18 and 23, as well as 19,10 and 21.

[10] Bakker 1982, 1988, Hoika 1986. I brought my misgivings about the shortcomings to Bakker’s attention in 1981 and he agreed at that time that archaeologists need to draw attention to the problematical use of Thiessen polygons in tomb research.