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Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)
Spitzes Hoch
DatedEst. 3500–500 BCE
Photo Lutz Lange ( talk ) · CC BY-SA 4.0Source file on Wikimedia Commons
Overview
About this site
Overview
Spitzes Hoch is a burial mound (tumulus) in the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt, in central Germany, about 130 km south-west of Berlin. The record gives it a broad estimated date of 3500 to 500 BCE, based on typology, and lists it under the Baalberge group. It is protected as a cultural monument (Kulturdenkmal).
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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
Spitzes Hoch
DescriptionSources for this section
Sources for this section
The mound stands 84 metres above sea level, 9 metres above the surrounding terrain, and its base is about 0.69 kilometres across. The land around it is flat, with the highest point in the vicinity, 92 metres, lying 1.1 km to the south. The nearest larger town is Bernburg, 6.4 km to the west. The surroundings are largely farmland.
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.
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. 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
6 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°48′08″ N, 11°49′56″ EFor a GPS or map app: 51.80222, 11.83222
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.
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Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q31312766wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
Image files
- Spitzes Hoch Latdorf (7).jpgLutz Lange ( talk )CC BY-SA 4.0
- Spitzes Hoch Latdorf (1).jpgLutz Lange ( talk )CC BY-SA 4.0
- Latdorf Prehistory 08.jpgErwinMeierCC BY-SA 4.0
- Latdorf Prehistory 09.jpgErwinMeierCC BY-SA 4.0
- Latdorf,Grabhügel,Das Spitze Hoch Infotafel.JPGM_H.DECC BY 3.0
- Latdorf,Grabhügel,Das Spitze Hoch.jpgM_H.DECC BY 3.0
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Spitzes Hoch (bungtod sa Alemanya, lat 51,80, long 11,83)" (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