Hammah 1 Passage Grave View all content for Hammah 1

taken from the on-site information board: The megalithic tomb of Hammah The more than 4000 years old megalithic tomb of Hammah is one of the best preserved Neolithic tombs in the district of Stade. The faithful preservation of the stone chamber is due to the Groß Sterneberger teacher Wilhelmi, who saved the grave after the First World War from being used as a source of raw material for a memorial monument. In 1924 the district of Stade leased the site of the megalithic tomb with an area of ??1100 square meters and bought the area in 1969. It is not without pride that the Hammah community keeps the megalithic tomb symbol in its local coat of arms. In August 1921, Prof. dr. K. H. Jacob-Friesen archaeologically examined the burial chamber and published in 1924 the obtained excavation results. The tomb has been erected on a flat top of a hill. The carrier inventions are recessed in the sandy soil; their glacier-polished smooth sides point inwards. 'Lining bricks' closed the gaps between the support stones. Up to the upper edge of the support stones a sand hill has been heaped up; the resulting inclined plane has facilitated the application of the capstones. In 1968, as part of a restoration, Dr. J. Deichmüller gained further insights: a gravel of beaten granites and rolling stones surrounded the burial chamber as an abutment within a radius of 2 m and to a depth of 2.25 m (measured from the top of the middle capstone); the ground inside the tomb was paved with a larger debris. In 1921, the excavators found outside the burial chamber an urn burial of the pre-Roman Iron Age at one of the supporting stones. The chamber contained only Bronze Age inventory: 7 shards of an ornate ceramic vessel, an ornate bronze arm ring preserved in fragments and also some cremated bones. The excavators concluded that Bronze Age people had cleared out the remains of the Neolithic primary burials, along with grave goods, before using the chamber to funnel one of their group members. Scientific investigations by Dr. Leuschner and Dr. Delorme have revealed that around 350 AD, Hammah began to build up bogs, which eventually led to a complete overmooring of the Neolithic and Bronze Age tombs. The bog saved the tombs from access by people seeking building materials for roads and house foundations. Only by the extensive cultivation of the moor at the beginning of this century, the originally 3-4 m thick upland moor was drained and dug. As part of the research project on landscape development and settlement history in the Stader area in 1983, the eastern edge of the hill of the megalithic tomb and some Bronze Age burial mounds were archaeologically examined. The results were submitted in 1985/86 in the series of the district Stade "Beiträge des Landkreises zu regionalen Themen" ("Contributions of the district to regional topics").

Posted by Nucleus 6th July 2019ce Edited 6th July 2019ce

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