Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)
Eppiesbargie
DatedEst. 3500–500 BCE
Photo Gouwenaar · Public domainSource file on Wikimedia Commons
Overview
About this site
Overview
Eppiesbargie (also Eppies Bargie or Eppiesbergje) is a burial mound west of Valthe in the province of Drenthe, the Netherlands.
It was raised in the time of the Single Grave culture, between 2850 and 2450 BCE, in the final phase of the Neolithic, and was used again for burial in the Middle Bronze Age.
Read on Wikipedia2 min readCC BY-SA 4.0
Where it sits in time
The site's dated range, placed against world reference points.
The scale is logarithmic: each step to the left is about ten times older than the last.
Article
Eppiesbargie
DescriptionSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Dutch): EppiesbargieCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Dutch): EppiesbargieCC BY-SA 4.0
After its first phase the mound served again as a burial mound in the Middle Bronze Age (about 1800 to 1100 BCE), when a second grave was made in it. The mound was then raised and weighted with boulders, and a third person was buried. In this phase a ditch was dug around the mound. In the following period an urnfield was laid out in the immediate surroundings.
The mound is part of a series of burial monuments (mounds, hunebedden and urnfields) between Emmen and Odoorn, probably lying along a prehistoric route. It stands close to the hunebedden D34 and D35.
The archaeologist Albert van Giffen investigated the mound in 1937 and excavated a large part of it.
ExcavationsSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Dutch): EppiesbargieCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Dutch): EppiesbargieCC BY-SA 4.0
The archaeologist Albert van Giffen investigated the mound in 1937 and excavated a large part of it.
NameSources for this section
- Wikipedia (Dutch): EppiesbargieCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (Dutch): EppiesbargieCC BY-SA 4.0
The name Eppies Bargie very probably derives from a former owner of the adjacent land, one Egbert (Eppie) Vos, who is said to have hanged himself, or had himself hanged, on the mound.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
German Hügelgräber and megalithic mounds
Burial mounds are found across Germany, from the northern plain to the south. Those of the Middle Bronze Age give a whole culture its name: the Tumulus culture (Hügelgräberkultur), which was dominant in Central Europe from about 1600 to 1300 BCE and buried its dead beneath mounds. It descended from the Unetice culture and covered parts of southern Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, Poland and France. Its society was a warrior society, as the weapons in the graves show. The Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture, which followed it, preferred cremation, and the Hallstatt culture of the Early Iron Age revived the great mound for chieftains.
Hallstatt-period mounds can be spectacular. The Hochdorf grave in Baden-Württemberg, of about 530 BCE, was found in 1968 and excavated in 1978 to 1979. Its mound, originally 6 metres high and about 60 metres across, had been worn down to about 1 metre. Inside lay a man of about fifty on a bronze recliner with eight wheels, wearing a gold-plated torc, with a four-wheeled wagon and drinking horns.
In the north, many mounds are older and belong to the Funnel Beaker culture, whose stone-chambered tombs are described in the articles on northern German megalithic tombs. Here a mound may cover a megalithic chamber, and the Atlas's classification sometimes cannot tell the two apart without a field visit.
Dating usually combines typology, pottery and metalwork and, where timber survives, tree-ring dating. Many mounds have been ploughed down, as Hochdorf shows.
When visiting, look for mounds in groups in woodland, where they survive best, for the hollow of an old central trench, and for kerbs of stone.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Tumulus culture, Wikipedia: Hallstatt culture, Wikipedia: Funnel beaker culture, Wikipedia: Tumulus, Wikipedia: Heuneburg, Wikipedia: Hochdorf Chieftain's Grave · CC BY-SA 4.0
From the article
Dated moments in the story
See it in 3D
An interpretive reconstruction of the monument, standing on the real ground at its exact point, under the sun for that place and season. Drag to look around it.
The reconstruction is ours, not a survey: it shows what a monument of this type looks like, at the size the record gives for this one.
Photographs
2 photographs, each with its author and licence
More photographs
Lore
Evidence & Lore
What the sources actually support — and, kept apart, what has been claimed.
What the evidence supports
Dates
Est. 3500–500 BCEHow this date was established: Type comparisonTypical range for megalithic mounds in Germany; this site has not been dated itself. German barrows ( Hugelgraber) run from the Neolithic (construction in central and south-west Germany c. 3500 BC and northern and central Germany c. 3400 BC) to the Late Bronze and Iron Age.Source for this date
Where it stands
Germany
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 52°50′51″ N, 6°51′57″ EFor a GPS or map app: 52.84759, 6.86586
Access is as our sources describe it; we have not visited the site to check.
Nearby
The closest sites in the Atlas, by straight line.
_dekstenen_die_op_de_grond_liggen.jpg){kind=link}
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q2329073wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
Image files
- Eppiesbergje tussen Valthe en Odoorn.jpgGouwenaarPublic domain
- Eppiesbargie, Valthe, NL.jpgCrazyPhunkPublic domain
Report a correctionWrong date, name, photograph or source? Tell us and it will be put right.
Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Eppiesbargie" (Dutch), licensed CC BY-SA 4.0; authors are listed in the page history. Reused under CC BY-SA 4.0. Read on Wikipedia · Edit history and authors
- Wikipedia (Dutch): EppiesbargieCC BY-SA 4.0
- Wikidata Q2329073CC0