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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.