Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T15:48:19.115Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Megalithic Tombs of Northern Europe1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

G. E. Daniel
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During the 19th century conclusions of great value concerning the origin and diffusion of the megalithic tombs of Europe were arrived at by the study of a few tombs in various regions : Montelius’s Orienten och Europa marks the culmination of research on these lines. In the last twenty-five years it has been gradually realized that before we can speak with assurance of the many problems which the megalithic tombs involve, before we can disperse what has aptly been called ‘the murky fog surrounding the megalith question’, we must have accurate and detailed regional surveys of the prehistoric burial-chambers of south-western, western and northern Europe. As is well known, such surveys have already been produced in many regions; for example those in Iberia by Obermaier, Vergileio Correia and Pericot y Garcia, and in Brittany by le Rouzic and Forde. In the British Isles we have been exceptionally fortunate in this respect: the work of Crawford and Hencken in England, of Hemp and Grimes in Wales, of Childe in Scotland, and of Estyn Evans in northern Ireland, has made the megalithic tombs of the British Isles better known than those of any comparable region in Europe.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 12 , Issue 47 , September 1938 , pp. 297 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1938

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Antiparisk Tidskrift för Sverige, (Stockholm, 1905), 13, 1–252.Google Scholar

3 C.F.C. and Hawkes, J., Arch. Journ., (1933) 90, 321.Google Scholar

4 De Hunebedden in Nederland, 1925 (English Translation, 1927–8).Google Scholar

5 Vorgeschichte Schleswig-Holsteins153 ff.

6 It still envelops, alas, the megalithic tombs of the south of France.

7 For instance faettestuer i Danmark, Nordiske Fortidsminder, 1917, 2;Google Scholar Studier ofver gånggriftkulturen i Danmark, Aarbnger for nordisk Oldkyndighed (1917). Google Scholar

8 Zur Megalithkultur Nordwestdeutschlands, Nachrichten aus Niedersachsens Urge-schichte 1930, no. 4, pp. 1–55.Google Scholar

9 Buttler, W., Der donaulandische und der westische Kulturkreis der jüngeren Steinzeit (1938).Google Scholar

10 Scandinavian Archaeology (Oxford, 1937), 63.Google ScholarPubMed

11 Sveriges Fusta Fornlämningar från Hednatiden (Uppsala, 1934), figs. 22 and 23.Google Scholar

12 Except on a very small scale such as that of Krause and Schoetensack in the Altmark (Zeitschriftfür Ethnologie, 1893, 15, 105 ff.),Google Scholar and of Enqvist on Omst and Tjörn (Stendlderbebyggeken pd Orust och Tjörn, Uppsala, 1922).Google Scholar

13 Madsen, , Gravhøje og Gravfund fra Stenaldereni Danmark, (Copenhagen, 1896),no. 45.Google Scholar

14 Montelius, , Orienten och Europa, p. 172 fig. 169.Google Scholar

15 Madsen, , op. cit., no. 3.Google Scholar

16 The Scilly tombs are probably derived from the Breton developments.

17 Montelius, , op. cit., p. 147, fig. 146.Google Scholar

18 ibid. p. 172, fig. 168.

19 I use the word dolmen throughout here in the Montelian sense of a small single chamber, andwhen I say rectangular or polygonal dolmen I refer to the shape of the chamber and not to thatof the surrounding barrow. The terms runddysser and langdysser I translate here as ‘dolmens in round barrows’ and ‘dolmens in long barrows’ and not ‘round dolmens’ and ‘long dolmens’ as domany archaeologists (e.g., Shetelig and Falk recently in their Scandinavian Archaeology).

20 Polygonal dolmens occur very rarely in long mounds. Rectangular dolmens occur more often inround barrows and are then confined mainly to Denmark.

21 Such as those recently figured by Schwantes, Vorgeschichte Schlemg-Holsteins, figs. 186–188. See also Sprockhoff, , Die Nordische Megalithkultur,figs. 1–7.Google Scholar

22 This type of monument in Brittany has recently been described by Piggott in ANTIQUITY, 1937, pp. 441 ff.Google Scholar

23 Trans. Glasgow Arch. Soc., 8, 133–4Google Scholar

24 Madsen, op. cit., no. 57.

25 ‘Some Baltic Problems, ’ Joburn. Roy. Anth. Inst., 1922, p. 36.Google Scholar

26 Scandinavian Archaeology,58–9.

27 Proc. Preh. Soc., 1936, 239.Google Scholar

28 In his Aarbøger article already cited.

29 Planned by Schwantes, , Vorgeschichte Schleswig-Holsteins, p. 182, fig. 196.Google Scholar

30 Madsen, op. cit., no. 43.

31 ibid. no. 47.

32 See Compte Rendu of the 1874 (Stockholm)Google ScholarPubMed Congris d’ anthropologie et d’archéologie préhistoriques 161–2.Google Scholar

33 Amer. Anth., 1930 32, 99.Google Scholar

34 Proc. Preh. Soc.., 1937, 340.Google Scholar

35 Irish NaturaZists Journal, 1935, 5, no. 10, 5.Google Scholar