Großsteingräber bei Rade
DatedEst. 3500–2800 BCE
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Overview
About this site
Overview
The Großsteingräber bei Rade were three megalithic tombs of the Neolithic Funnel Beaker culture near Rade, a district of Neu Wulmstorf in the Landkreis Harburg, Lower Saxony, Germany. They were destroyed in the middle of the 20th century. The catalogue record gives a typological date estimate of 3500 to 2800 BCE for the group.
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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
Großsteingräber bei Rade
SettingSources for this section
- Wikipedia (German): Großsteingräber bei RadeCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (German): Großsteingräber bei RadeCC BY-SA 4.0
The existence of the tombs is attested only by map symbols that Willi Wegewitz added in 1955 to a section of a Messtischblatt (a topographic sheet), based on the state of survey of the late 1940s. According to these, one tomb lay at the southern edge of the village, immediately east of the Alte Dorfstraße, a second lay east of Rade at the edge of a wood, and the third lay north-east of the village in the wood.
A further symbol south-east of Rade, in the Tegebusch, marks the stone cist in the Feldmark Rade, which is still preserved and was investigated by Wegewitz.
Research historySources for this section
- Wikipedia (German): Großsteingräber bei RadeCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- Wikipedia (German): Großsteingräber bei RadeCC BY-SA 4.0
A further symbol south-east of Rade, in the Tegebusch, marks the stone cist in the Feldmark Rade, which is still preserved and was investigated by Wegewitz. It is not one of the three destroyed tombs.
The three tombs were never described in detail. When Ernst Sprockhoff and Gerhard Körner revisited the sites in 1967, they could find no remains.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
Megalithic tombs of the North European Plain
Across the plain from the Netherlands to Poland, the Funnel Beaker culture left thousands of megalithic tombs. Nordic megalith architecture emerged in northern Europe mainly between 3500 and 2800 BCE. Counts have risen as surveys improved: Schleswig-Holstein now reports 3,212 megalithic monuments and 958 long mounds, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 5,991 megaliths (against 648 in 2010), and Lower Saxony 1,155. Altogether 11,162 megaliths are known in these three regions, and with Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt the figure for northern Germany rises to 11,648. Denmark has 5,001 registered monuments, the Netherlands 101, Sweden 639 and Poland 18. Johannes Müller has suggested that originally more than 75,000 megaliths were built.
Monuments are classed by type: simple dolmens, extended dolmens, passage graves, great dolmens, unchambered long barrows and stone cists. The oldest are the simple dolmens, which appeared around 3500 BCE and are found across almost the whole area of Nordic megalith architecture. Their entrances were built to be reopened. A megalithic entrance had to seal the tomb, yet allow the community to gain access to the interior again, even after a long time, to perform rituals.
In the Netherlands the hunebedden were built between 3470 and 3250 BCE and used until about 2760 BCE; 54 of the original 100 survive, 52 of them in Drenthe. Poland has only 18 registered monuments, and the long barrows in parts of Poland were typically earthen rather than megalithic.
Dating combines radiocarbon dates from bone and pottery. The tombs were used by later cultures too, so a single tomb can hold remains from different periods.
When visiting, look at how the capstones sit on the supporting stones, how the entrance is built, and the frame of kerbstones around the mound.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Nordic megalith architecture, Wikipedia: Megaliths in the Netherlands, Wikipedia: Funnel beaker culture, Wikipedia: Megaliths in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern · CC BY-SA 4.0
From the article
Dated moments in the story
- 1955
Ihre Existenz ist nur durch Kartensignaturen bezeugt, die Willi Wegewitz 1955 in einer Publikation auf dem Ausschnitt eines Messtischblatts auf Grundlage des Bearbeitungsstands der späten 1940er Jahre angebracht hat.
Source - 1967
Die drei Großsteingräber wurden nicht näher beschrieben; Ernst Sprockhoff und Gerhard Körner konnten bei einer erneuten Begehung der Standorte 1967 keine Reste mehr feststellen.
Source
Lore
Evidence & Lore
What the sources actually support — and, kept apart, what has been claimed.
What the evidence supports
Dates
Est. 3500–2800 BCEHow this date was established: Type comparisonTypical range for megalithic tombs in Germany; this site has not been dated itself. German stone tombs (Grosssteingraber) belong to the Nordic megalith tradition which emerged predominantly between 3500 and 2800 BC.Source for this date
Where it stands
Germany
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 53°23′07″ N, 9°47′29″ EFor a GPS or map app: 53.38516, 9.79135
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.
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q30106121wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
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Around this place
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Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Großsteingräber bei Rade" (German), 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