Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)The Copper Age
Galgenhügel
DatedEst. 3500–500 BCE
Photo Michael Köhler · CC BY 4.0Source file on Wikimedia Commons
Overview
About this site
Overview
The Galgenhügel is a tumulus near Sömmerda, in the federal state of Thuringia in central Germany. Its date is estimated on typological grounds at 3500 to 500 BCE.
The site stands 224 metres above sea level, 16 metres above the surrounding terrain, and its base is about 0.70 km wide.
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
Galgenhügel
The surrounding land is mostly flat and is largely covered by farmland, with hills and woodland uncommon in the region.
SettingSources for this section
Sources for this section
The Galgenhügel lies 220 km south-west of Berlin. The surrounding land is mostly flat and is largely covered by farmland, with hills and woodland uncommon in the region. The highest point in the surroundings is the Großer Ettersberg, 486 metres above sea level and 14.7 km south of the site. The nearest larger town is Erfurt, 19.9 km to the south-west. About 111 people live per square kilometre in the surrounding area.
The climate is hemiboreal. The average temperature is 8 °C, with July the warmest month at 20 °C and December the coldest at -4 °C.
ContextSources for this section
Sources for this section
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 its society was a warrior society, as the weapons in its 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.
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
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
4 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
- 51°08′05″ N, 11°10′28″ EFor a GPS or map app: 51.13464, 11.17443
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.
Leubingen tumulus3500–500 BCE
Leubingen tumulus1992–1892 BCE- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Palmberghügel3500–500 BCE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Hallonge3500–500 BCE
Menhir of Ettersburg2800–1800 BCE
Menhir of Buttelstedt2800–1800 BCE
Weitester Hügel3500–500 BCE
Bärenhügel3500–500 BCE
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q30712767wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
Image files
- Galgenhügel Orlishausen 2004-04-25 02.jpgMichael KöhlerCC BY 4.0
- Galgenhügel Orlishausen 2004-04-25 01.jpgMichael KöhlerCC BY 4.0
- Galgenhügel Orlishausen 2004-04-25 03.jpgMichael KöhlerCC BY 4.0
- Galgenhügel Orlishausen 2004-04-25 04.jpgMichael KöhlerCC BY 4.0
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Galgenhügel (bungtod sa Alemanya, Thuringia, lat 51,13, long 11,17)" (ceb), 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