The Modern Antiquarian. Stone Circles, Ancient Sites, Neolithic Monuments, Ancient Monuments, Prehistoric Sites, Megalithic MysteriesThe Modern Antiquarian

Lahn 3

Chambered Tomb

Fieldnotes

taken from the information display:

The oldest and at the same time the most impressive monuments of Lower Saxony are the neolithic megalithic tombs. While today in Lower Saxony about 400 mostly only incompletely preserved tombs are known, the number of originally existing tombs was many times higher.

The extensive destruction is almost entirely due to human intervention in the last two centuries. For example, blocks of boulders, often weighing several tons, were used as building material completely or blasted for house foundations, walls, churches, roads, bridges, dykes, etc., and some were even negotiated in neighboring countries.

The scale of the destruction also illustrates the megalithic tomb Lahn (see Figures 1 and 2) of which there are only a few stones in their original position and a large part has disappeared. The rather large burial chamber, which lay in an elongated hill, had approximately 17.5 x 1.6 m internal dimensions after the reconstruction (Figure 2).

The predominantly ceramic funerary objects (cups, bowls and funnel cups, Figure 3) date the megalithic tombs into the funnel beaker culture (3500 - 2000 BC), in a later section (about 2300 - 2000 BC) of this Neolithic agricultural (single crown, emmer, dwarf wheat, barley) and cattle breeding (cattle, swine, goat, sheep) culture.

Settlement sites of the funnel beaker culture have not yet been fully investigated, but some house plans give hints to the residential buildings of that time. For example, in Wittenwater, district of Uelzen, the post pits of a 15,6 x 6 m house (Figure 4) were discovered, which was divided into several rooms and on the southern side of which a grain millstone was found and possibly a small (grain?) storage.
Nucleus Posted by Nucleus
8th November 2018ce

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