Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)
Ekeby 8:3
DatedEst. 2000 BCE–1050 CE
No licensed photograph yetWe have no photograph we may publish for this site, so the interpretive 3D view leads instead.
Overview
About this site
Overview
Ekeby 8:3 is a megalithic mound in Kumla Municipality, Sweden. It lies at 59.1182° N, 15.2552° E.
Catalogue recordSources and licences
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
Ekeby 8:3
ContextSources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
Sweden's landscape is thick with prehistoric graves, and most of the mounds in the Atlas are round earth mounds (gravhögar) or heaps of stone (rösen, or cairns). Many belong to the Nordic Bronze Age, roughly 1700 to 500 BCE, when the elite were buried beneath mounds of earth or stone. In the early part of that period the dead were often laid in oak coffins or stone cists; towards the end of the second millennium BCE cremation became the norm, and the ashes went into an urn or a small pit under a cairn. The regional background, “Swedish burial mounds and cairns”, is given below.
DatingSources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
No scientific date has been published for this site. Monuments of this type in Sweden are generally dated 2000 BCE to 1050 CE; the site itself may fall inside or outside that range.
Swedish barrows are mostly Bronze Age rosen of the Nordic Bronze Age (c. 2000-500 BC); the Viking-age royal mounds of Gamla Uppsala belong to the Viking Age (about 800-1050 CE).
Setting
28 other recorded monuments lie within 10 km (1 within 1 km, 15 within 5 km), 22 of them of the same type. In Kumla Municipality, Sweden, 20 of the 23 recorded monuments are of this type.
The nearest recorded monuments are Ekeby 8:2 (0.1 km north-east, megalithic mound); Kumla 24:1 (1.9 km south-west, megalith); Kumla 51:1 (1.9 km south-west, megalithic mound); Kumla 25:1 (1.9 km south-west, megalith).
ProtectionSources for this section
Sources for this section
Heritage status: monument in Fornminnesregistret.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
Swedish burial mounds and cairns
Sweden's landscape is thick with prehistoric graves, and most of the mounds in the Atlas are round earth mounds (gravhögar) or heaps of stone (rösen, or cairns). Many belong to the Nordic Bronze Age, roughly 1700 to 500 BCE, when the elite were buried beneath mounds of earth or stone. In the early part of that period the dead were often laid in oak coffins or stone cists; towards the end of the second millennium BCE cremation became the norm, and the ashes went into an urn or a small pit under a cairn.
Many of these graves have not been excavated. Their dates are inferred from shape, setting and the grave goods of excavated neighbours, so the Atlas gives a range instead of a single year.
The showpiece is the King's Grave at Kivik in Scania, the remains of an unusually grand double burial of about the fifteenth century BCE. Its restored cairn is some 75 metres across and 3.5 metres high. At the centre is a cist about 4 metres long, built of ten upright slabs, eight of them carved on the inside with ships, a two-horse chariot, lur players, axes, birds and fish. Farmers opened the chamber in 1748 while taking stone for field walls, and the carvings were first recognised in 1756. The excavation of 1931 recovered only teeth, bone fragments and broken bronze, because the grave had been looted. In the nineteenth century some scholars read the carvings as the work of Phoenician settlers; that idea was later rejected.
When visiting, look for mounds on ridges with a view over farmland or water, for kerb stones at the foot of a cairn, and for a shallow dip in the top that often marks an old digging.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Tumulus, Wikipedia: Nordic Bronze Age, Wikipedia: Kivik grave, Wikipedia: Burial mound · 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.
Lore
Evidence & Lore
What the sources actually support — and, kept apart, what has been claimed.
What the evidence supports
Dates
Est. 2000 BCE–1050 CEHow this date was established: Type comparisonTypical range for megalithic mounds in Sweden; this site has not been dated itself. Swedish barrows are mostly Bronze Age rosen of the Nordic Bronze Age (c. 2000-500 BC); the Viking-age royal mounds of Gamla Uppsala belong to the Viking Age (about 800-1050 CE).Source for this date
Where it stands
Sweden
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 59°07′05″ N, 15°15′19″ EFor a GPS or map app: 59.11815, 15.25519
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.
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Ekeby 8:22000 BCE–1050 CE
- MegalithKumla 24:12000–500 BCE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Kumla 51:12000 BCE–1050 CE
- MegalithKumla 25:12000–500 BCE
- CistYxhult stone cist3500–2800 BCE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Kumla 52:12000 BCE–1050 CE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Kumla 53:12000 BCE–1050 CE
- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Björnrösena2000 BCE–1050 CE
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q29859743wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
Compiled from open records (Wikidata, CC0; OpenStreetMap, ODbL) and a regional background article based on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).
- Wikidata Q29859743CC0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0