D13

The Großsteingrab Eext, also called Treppengrab van Eext or Stemberg, is a megalithic tomb of the western group of the Funnel Beaker culture at Eext, a district of Aa en Hunze in Drenthe, Netherlands. It carries the Van-Giffen number D13. The monument is unusual for its steep, four-stepped stairway, which gave it its name and provides access to the sunken burial chamber. This crypt-like form is unique among the hunebedden of the Netherlands.

The tomb is a passage grave dug into the ground and aligned east-northeast to west-southwest. Its chamber measures 4,3 m in length and 3,2 m in width, with three pairs of wall stones on the long sides and an end stone on each short side. Of the original three capstones, only one survives; it was found nearby and replaced in 1976. The flat wall and cap stones fit so closely that almost no gaps remain. The four-stepped entrance, bordered by walls of rolled stones, was added in the second building phase.

The site was discovered in 1735 and rediscovered by stone seekers in 1756, when vessels and axes were sold to collectors and two capstones were removed. Joannes van Lier examined and partly restored the tomb, and his critical correspondence led to the first monograph on a Dutch megalithic tomb, published in 1760. Investigations continued in the 19th and 20th centuries, including excavations by Albert Egges van Giffen in 1927 and by Jan N. Lanting in 1984. It became a National Monument in 1978 and was recorded by photogrammetry in a 3D atlas in 2017.

Van Lier found numerous ceramic vessels containing burned bones, but these were not preserved. The Rijksmuseum van Oudheden in Leiden holds a prehistoric handled vessel, a flint axe and a medieval ceramic beaker; it is unclear whether the latter two came from Eext or the nearby Großsteingrab Eext-Es (D12). Monuments of this kind in the Netherlands were built as hunebedden by the western group of the Funnel Beaker culture between 3470 and 3250 BCE and used until about 2760 BCE. After that culture ended, the sites were reused by the Single Grave and Bell Beaker cultures in the Early Bronze Age and, less often, into the Middle Ages.

D13 is a dolmen in Aa en Hunze, Germany. Wikidata describes it as: dolmen in the Netherlands. A typological estimate: 3500 BCE to 2800 BCE. No English Wikipedia article exists for it; the full text below is the German article "Großsteingrab Eext", shown in the original language.