Lancken-Granitz dolmens
Encyclopedia
The Lancken-Granitz dolmen
s are a group of seven megalith
tombs in the Lancken-Granitz
municipality on Rügen
, northern Germany
. Erected during the middle Neolithic
, when they were used by the Funnelbeaker culture
, at least some were in use until the early Bronze Age
. Three of them are encircled by solitary rocks forming either rectangles or a stone circle
, one has a solitary "guardian stone" on its eastern side.
The dolmens were constructed from glacial erratic
boulders and red sandstone
. In part subdivided into up to four compartments as common for the region, one dolmen showed a subdivision into six such compartments, which is an unusually high number. When the tombs were archaeologically assessed in 1969, Stone and Bronze Age funerary goods were retrieved, including flint hatches, stone axes, amber pearls, bronze needles and necklaces as well as an abundance of arrowheads and pottery.
, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, south of the federal route B196, just southwest of the village Lancken-Granitz and northwest of the village Burtevitz, both part of the Lancken-Granitz
municipality. A group of seven dolmens is lined up northwest of the road between Lancken and Klein Stresow, numbered 1 to 7 from the northeast to the southwest. This numbering follows Schmidt (2001), other publications use different numeration codes. Dolmen Nr. 6 and Nr. 7 belong to the Burtevitz subdistrict, which also contains several megaliths, but are nevertheless included with the Lancken-Granitz Dolmen per Schmidt (2001), as they lie just across the border to the Lancken-Granitz district that runs between dolmen Nr. 5 and Nr. 6.
The dolmens are part of a series built between 3,500 and 3,200 BC, during the Neolithic
. As of 2001, about 400 of those are preserved in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, 55 of which are located on the isle of Rügen. Initially their number had been much larger, but many were destroyed when their boulders were used for church, housing and street construction since the Middle Ages. In the 20th century, local teacher Friedrich-Wilhelm Furthmann and his wife preserved the dolmens in the Lancken-Granitz and Burtevitz area, before they were excavated by archaeologist Ewald Schuldt in 1969 and immediately thereafter restored for touristic use. This was part of a series of 106 excavations conducted by Schuldt's team on megalith sites in present-day Mecklenburg-Vorpommern between 1964 and 1972.
which either form a rectangular shape (Hünenbett, dolmen Nr. 1 and 3), the most common form of Neolithic tomb encirclement structures, or a stone circle
(Bannkreis, dolmen Nr. 6) with unknown, proposedly magic, function.
Both Hünenbett shapes are oriented from east to west, and their long sides measure 20.5 metres (67.3 ft) and 20 metres (65.6 ft), respectively. At the Hünenbett around dolmen Nr. 3, only 16 boulders are still in place, while initially each long side had comprised 13 boulders. A "guardian stone" is placed adjacent to its eastern narrow side.
The stone circle around dolmen Nr. 6 has a diameter of 12 metres (39.4 ft). The dolmens are located in the center of their respective encirclements (dolmen Nr. 3 and 6) or at its western end (dolmen Nr. 1).
boulders, with the gaps filled with plates of red sandstone
and clay. The entrance was typically made from two upright sandstone plates covered by another rock. Similar sandstone plates were used to subdivide the interior of some of the dolmens into a hallway with adjacent compartments. E.g. dolmen Nr. 1, the largest one, had three such chambers on each side of the hallway, while a subdivision could not be demonstrated for dolmen Nr. 2. Division into one to four compartments is common for dolmens, yet dolmen Nr. 1 with its six compartments is noted as a rare exception.
Common Neolithic funerary goods found in the dolmens of the region are tools, pottery, and amber
pearls. It is assumed that the pots were filled with groceries, and that there were also other, long decomposed organic funerary goods. Most probably, a magic function was ascribed to the amber pearls, especially the ones of a double axe shape. Funerary goods found in each dolmen near Lancken include flint hatches, chisels, amber pearls, and pottery, the latter being in part of the Funnelbeaker (TRB) type
. An abundance of arrowheads were found in dolmens Nr. 1 through 5. Stone blades were found in dolmens Nr. 1, 3, 4 and 5. Two stone axes were excavated in dolmen Nr. 1, one double-edged, and another two stone axes were found in dolmen Nr. 3, one of the rare Nackenkammaxt type. Other finds include a granite
rubbing stone (dolmen Nr. 3) and a Gnidel- or Krähenstein (dolmen Nr. 4, a small, black flintstone rounded by the sea). Remains of human skulls and bones were found in dolmen Nr. 3 and Nr. 4.
Several of the Lancken-Granitz dolmens remained in use until the early (Nordic) Bronze Age
. In dolmen Nr. 1, fragments of a bronze
needle and a bronze necklace were found, and in dolmen Nr. 3, a bronze needle with one end rolled-up, a bronze finger ring, and part of a bronze necklace. In the early Bronze Age
, dolmen Nr. 1 was abandoned and filled with rocks and dirt, had its entrance closed and was covered by an artificial hill. Likewise, dolmen Nr. 6 including its stone circle was covered by a hill, 2 metres (6.6 ft) in height, and it was discovered only in 1969 that it was not a tumulus
, but a dolmen - it had even been protected as a Bronze Age tumulus before.
The dolmens were nevertheless frequented by the local population throughout the Iron Age as well as the Slavic and the early German period, as multiple archaeological finds show, yet they were also used as a dump by the local East German LPG
for "stones which had been cleared from the fields". Dolmen Nr. 6 was re-used as a burial site during the late Slavic period, while else the Rani
erected burial mounds of their own, keeping them in some distance to the dolmens. In recent history, its excavated dolmen was used as a shelter by the East German army
.
Dolmen
A dolmen—also known as a portal tomb, portal grave, dolmain , cromlech , anta , Hünengrab/Hünenbett , Adamra , Ispun , Hunebed , dös , goindol or quoit—is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of...
s are a group of seven megalith
Megalith
A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. Megalithic describes structures made of such large stones, utilizing an interlocking system without the use of mortar or cement.The word 'megalith' comes from the Ancient...
tombs in the Lancken-Granitz
Lancken-Granitz
Lancken-Granitz is a municipality in the Vorpommern-Rügen district, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. Near the villages of Lancken and Burtevitz are several megalith tombs from the Neolithic....
municipality on Rügen
Rügen
Rügen is Germany's largest island. Located in the Baltic Sea, it is part of the Vorpommern-Rügen district of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.- Geography :Rügen is located off the north-eastern coast of Germany in the Baltic Sea...
, northern Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. Erected during the middle Neolithic
Neolithic
The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...
, when they were used by the Funnelbeaker culture
Funnelbeaker culture
The Funnelbeaker culture, short TRB from Trichterbecherkultur is the principal north central European megalithic culture of late Neolithic Europe.- Predecessor and successor cultures :...
, at least some were in use until the early Bronze Age
Nordic Bronze Age
The Nordic Bronze Age is the name given by Oscar Montelius to a period and a Bronze Age culture in Scandinavian pre-history, c. 1700-500 BC, with sites that reached as far east as Estonia. Succeeding the Late Neolithic culture, its ethnic and linguistic affinities are unknown in the absence of...
. Three of them are encircled by solitary rocks forming either rectangles or a stone circle
Stone circle
A stone circle is a monument of standing stones arranged in a circle. Such monuments have been constructed across the world throughout history for many different reasons....
, one has a solitary "guardian stone" on its eastern side.
The dolmens were constructed from glacial erratic
Glacial erratic
A glacial erratic is a piece of rock that differs from the size and type of rock native to the area in which it rests. "Erratics" take their name from the Latin word errare, and are carried by glacial ice, often over distances of hundreds of kilometres...
boulders and red sandstone
Sandstone
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...
. In part subdivided into up to four compartments as common for the region, one dolmen showed a subdivision into six such compartments, which is an unusually high number. When the tombs were archaeologically assessed in 1969, Stone and Bronze Age funerary goods were retrieved, including flint hatches, stone axes, amber pearls, bronze needles and necklaces as well as an abundance of arrowheads and pottery.
Background
The dolmens are located in the southeastern part of RügenRügen
Rügen is Germany's largest island. Located in the Baltic Sea, it is part of the Vorpommern-Rügen district of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.- Geography :Rügen is located off the north-eastern coast of Germany in the Baltic Sea...
, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, south of the federal route B196, just southwest of the village Lancken-Granitz and northwest of the village Burtevitz, both part of the Lancken-Granitz
Lancken-Granitz
Lancken-Granitz is a municipality in the Vorpommern-Rügen district, in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. Near the villages of Lancken and Burtevitz are several megalith tombs from the Neolithic....
municipality. A group of seven dolmens is lined up northwest of the road between Lancken and Klein Stresow, numbered 1 to 7 from the northeast to the southwest. This numbering follows Schmidt (2001), other publications use different numeration codes. Dolmen Nr. 6 and Nr. 7 belong to the Burtevitz subdistrict, which also contains several megaliths, but are nevertheless included with the Lancken-Granitz Dolmen per Schmidt (2001), as they lie just across the border to the Lancken-Granitz district that runs between dolmen Nr. 5 and Nr. 6.
The dolmens are part of a series built between 3,500 and 3,200 BC, during the Neolithic
Neolithic
The Neolithic Age, Era, or Period, or New Stone Age, was a period in the development of human technology, beginning about 9500 BC in some parts of the Middle East, and later in other parts of the world. It is traditionally considered as the last part of the Stone Age...
. As of 2001, about 400 of those are preserved in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, 55 of which are located on the isle of Rügen. Initially their number had been much larger, but many were destroyed when their boulders were used for church, housing and street construction since the Middle Ages. In the 20th century, local teacher Friedrich-Wilhelm Furthmann and his wife preserved the dolmens in the Lancken-Granitz and Burtevitz area, before they were excavated by archaeologist Ewald Schuldt in 1969 and immediately thereafter restored for touristic use. This was part of a series of 106 excavations conducted by Schuldt's team on megalith sites in present-day Mecklenburg-Vorpommern between 1964 and 1972.
Encirclements
Three dolmens are encircled by standing, solitary rocksStanding stone
Standing stones, orthostats, liths, or more commonly megaliths are solitary stones set vertically in the ground and come in many different varieties....
which either form a rectangular shape (Hünenbett, dolmen Nr. 1 and 3), the most common form of Neolithic tomb encirclement structures, or a stone circle
Stone circle
A stone circle is a monument of standing stones arranged in a circle. Such monuments have been constructed across the world throughout history for many different reasons....
(Bannkreis, dolmen Nr. 6) with unknown, proposedly magic, function.
Both Hünenbett shapes are oriented from east to west, and their long sides measure 20.5 metres (67.3 ft) and 20 metres (65.6 ft), respectively. At the Hünenbett around dolmen Nr. 3, only 16 boulders are still in place, while initially each long side had comprised 13 boulders. A "guardian stone" is placed adjacent to its eastern narrow side.
The stone circle around dolmen Nr. 6 has a diameter of 12 metres (39.4 ft). The dolmens are located in the center of their respective encirclements (dolmen Nr. 3 and 6) or at its western end (dolmen Nr. 1).
The dolmens
All dolmens were constructed from glacial erraticGlacial erratic
A glacial erratic is a piece of rock that differs from the size and type of rock native to the area in which it rests. "Erratics" take their name from the Latin word errare, and are carried by glacial ice, often over distances of hundreds of kilometres...
boulders, with the gaps filled with plates of red sandstone
Sandstone
Sandstone is a sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains.Most sandstone is composed of quartz and/or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earth's crust. Like sand, sandstone may be any colour, but the most common colours are tan, brown, yellow,...
and clay. The entrance was typically made from two upright sandstone plates covered by another rock. Similar sandstone plates were used to subdivide the interior of some of the dolmens into a hallway with adjacent compartments. E.g. dolmen Nr. 1, the largest one, had three such chambers on each side of the hallway, while a subdivision could not be demonstrated for dolmen Nr. 2. Division into one to four compartments is common for dolmens, yet dolmen Nr. 1 with its six compartments is noted as a rare exception.
Common Neolithic funerary goods found in the dolmens of the region are tools, pottery, and amber
Amber
Amber is fossilized tree resin , which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Amber is used as an ingredient in perfumes, as a healing agent in folk medicine, and as jewelry. There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents...
pearls. It is assumed that the pots were filled with groceries, and that there were also other, long decomposed organic funerary goods. Most probably, a magic function was ascribed to the amber pearls, especially the ones of a double axe shape. Funerary goods found in each dolmen near Lancken include flint hatches, chisels, amber pearls, and pottery, the latter being in part of the Funnelbeaker (TRB) type
Funnelbeaker culture
The Funnelbeaker culture, short TRB from Trichterbecherkultur is the principal north central European megalithic culture of late Neolithic Europe.- Predecessor and successor cultures :...
. An abundance of arrowheads were found in dolmens Nr. 1 through 5. Stone blades were found in dolmens Nr. 1, 3, 4 and 5. Two stone axes were excavated in dolmen Nr. 1, one double-edged, and another two stone axes were found in dolmen Nr. 3, one of the rare Nackenkammaxt type. Other finds include a granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...
rubbing stone (dolmen Nr. 3) and a Gnidel- or Krähenstein (dolmen Nr. 4, a small, black flintstone rounded by the sea). Remains of human skulls and bones were found in dolmen Nr. 3 and Nr. 4.
Several of the Lancken-Granitz dolmens remained in use until the early (Nordic) Bronze Age
Nordic Bronze Age
The Nordic Bronze Age is the name given by Oscar Montelius to a period and a Bronze Age culture in Scandinavian pre-history, c. 1700-500 BC, with sites that reached as far east as Estonia. Succeeding the Late Neolithic culture, its ethnic and linguistic affinities are unknown in the absence of...
. In dolmen Nr. 1, fragments of a bronze
Bronze
Bronze is a metal alloy consisting primarily of copper, usually with tin as the main additive. It is hard and brittle, and it was particularly significant in antiquity, so much so that the Bronze Age was named after the metal...
needle and a bronze necklace were found, and in dolmen Nr. 3, a bronze needle with one end rolled-up, a bronze finger ring, and part of a bronze necklace. In the early Bronze Age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
, dolmen Nr. 1 was abandoned and filled with rocks and dirt, had its entrance closed and was covered by an artificial hill. Likewise, dolmen Nr. 6 including its stone circle was covered by a hill, 2 metres (6.6 ft) in height, and it was discovered only in 1969 that it was not a tumulus
Tumulus
A tumulus is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds, Hügelgrab or kurgans, and can be found throughout much of the world. A tumulus composed largely or entirely of stones is usually referred to as a cairn...
, but a dolmen - it had even been protected as a Bronze Age tumulus before.
The dolmens were nevertheless frequented by the local population throughout the Iron Age as well as the Slavic and the early German period, as multiple archaeological finds show, yet they were also used as a dump by the local East German LPG
Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft
The German expression Landwirtschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaft , or — more commonly — its acronym LPG was the official designation for large, collectivised farms in the former East Germany, corresponding to Soviet Kolkhoz.The collectivisation of private and state owned agricultural...
for "stones which had been cleared from the fields". Dolmen Nr. 6 was re-used as a burial site during the late Slavic period, while else the Rani
Rani (Slavic tribe)
The Rani or Rujani were a West Slavic tribe based on the island of Rugia and the southwestern mainland across the Strelasund in what is today northeastern Germany....
erected burial mounds of their own, keeping them in some distance to the dolmens. In recent history, its excavated dolmen was used as a shelter by the East German army
National People's Army
The National People’s Army were the armed forces of the German Democratic Republic .The NVA was established in 1956 and disestablished in 1990. There were frequent reports of East German advisors with Communist African countries during the Cold War...
.