Megalithic Tomb

Megalithic Tomb


The megalithic tombs are the best known archaeological monuments in this country. We now know that they were made by the farmers of the Funnel-Beaker Culture. The barrows were communal burial chambers, used for generations to inter the dead. The dead were often buried with special gifts such as flint arrow heads, stone axes and especially, with lots of beautiful pottery. The pots may have contained food for the journey to the hereafter. However, this has never been found as all vegetable material has decayed.

For the building of the tombs people used large boulders left here in the second last Ice Age. In many places in Europe the people of the New Stone Age used these large boulders to build tombs. Not only in the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany but also in Ireland, Spain and France. 

Originally, megalithic tombs did not look as bare as the ones that can still be seen in the north-east of the country. They were covered by an earthen mound and only the tops of the large covering stones were visible. Around the mound was often a circle of smaller stones.

The megalithic tomb in Archeon is a small one. The largest tomb in the Netherlands is in the province of Drenthe and measures 22.5 meters. The largest boulders can weigh as much as 23,000 kilos.

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