Treasures of the North 1
The mystery of the dolmens
Door Christien Boomsma
By Christien Boomsma
Christien Boomsma
‘Dolmens’, says Daan Raemaekers, ‘are like fine wine. They just get better as they get older.’
He struggles to decide which of the fifty-four Dutch dolmens (fifty-two in Drenthe and two in Groningen) is his favourite. Each of the megalithic tombs is unique and fascinating in its own way. Some of them are full of memories of digs and meeting new people, while others have a unique history or are simply aesthetically pleasing, the archaeologist says.
‘But maybe D40’, he says, ‘near Emmen.’
D40 – the D for Drenthe – may not be one of the biggest dolmens, but its surroundings are beautiful. ‘D40, along with D38 and D39, is located in a heathland, surrounded by pine trees. It has an unusually large cap stone that looms over the entire construction. From some viewpoints, it appears to almost be floating. It’s kind of magical.’
Alien civilisation
Raemaekers isn’t the only one who’s fascinated by dolmens: many people assign deeper meaning to them. When he was part of the dig at D34 last year, he met a woman from the neighbouring village who stopped by every week to lay down flowers. Other people use dolmens as a play to meditate. Yet others think they’re remnants of an alien civilisation or use them for rituals during the solstice. ‘And a discussion about dolmens will almost always reference ley lines.’
From some viewpoints, D40 appears to almost be floating, which is kind of magical
What does he say when he meets people with different ideas about the function or origins of the most famous prehistoric remnants in the Netherlands? ‘I never debate with them. I just listen and ask them why they think what they think. Then I explain why I feel differently.’
The dolmens – which can be found all over the world, including in Scandinavia, Germany, and Belgium – were built by the people from the Funnelbeaker culture, named after the funnel-shaped earthenware they made. They used the gigantic boulders that were transported to the Hondsrug by glaciers during the Ice Age.
What is a dolmen?
The Hondsrug, the sand ridge that starts in Groningen and crosses through Drenthe, is covered in dolmens: five-thousand-year-old tombs made out of gigantic boulders.
A dolmen is a kind of tomb that’s always built the same: the burial chamber was constructed from megaliths covered with a cap stone and a single opening. The floor was covered in cobbles. The dolmens were surrounded by smaller rocks. The burial chamber was covered in sand to form a tumulus, which hid everything but the cap stones from view.
There are currently fifty-two dolmens in Drenthe. Groningen only has two, one of which was moved to the Muzeeaquarium in Delfzijl.
If you want to know more about dolmens, visit the Hunebedcentrum in Borger, or look up the dolmens yourself. Here is an overview of where they all are.
Farmers
However, we still know surprisingly little about the society that built the dolmens. One thing is for sure, though: they were farmers. Pollen studies on soil samples from the bottom of Drenthe lakes have shown that vegetation changed when the dolmen builders were alive. Tree species disappeared, making way for vegetation that was evidence of land cultivation. ‘If you want to farm the land, you have to get rid of the trees.’
It’s also clear that the dolmens are grave sites. Even though skeletons or bone fragments have never been found because the soft sandy soil in Drenthe eroded, archaeologists have found cremation remains of men, women, and children – eight kilograms in total. At other locations across Europe, researchers have found bones. ‘In Sweden, for example, remains have been really well-preserved’, says Raemaekers.
But other than that?
Apart from the giant boulders, researchers have to make do with the pottery that was left in or around the graves, the above-mentioned cremation remains, and flint arrowheads. Even discolouration in the soil, which usually signifies to archaeologists that digging took place or that there was a dwelling there, has disappeared in Drenthe due to five thousand years of soil processes.
Dug up
Over time, the dolmens have also been violated, which has hampered research as well. Some were disturbed by grave robbers, others by farmers who wanted the stones of their land. In 1923, a man in Exloo found a burial chamber in his yard. He dug it up so thoroughly that he destroyed the entire site. ‘In the nineteenth century, people would dig up the tumuli, the burial mounds that covered the dolmens because they thought it was just windblown sand’, says Raemaekers.
To my own surprise, I keep discovering things that we never even knew
Even scientists have damaged sites. Famous archaeologist Albert van Giffen, the first person to document the dolmens and who studied their age and shape, destroyed Valtherveld dolmen D33 in 1958 so he could recreate D49, which is also known as the Papeloze Kerk (‘Priestless Church’). ‘That’s the kind of thing we tend to frown upon today’, Raemaekers understates.
And yet. He keeps looking for evidence that might lead to new insights. ‘To my own surprise, I keep discovering things that we never even knew.’
That’s partly because he’s not necessarily interested in the burial chambers themselves, but rather the role they played in the dolmen builders’ lives and the lives of the people that came after them. ‘My goal is to be an anthropologist of prehistory.’
Bone fragments
This past summer, Raemaekers and his students went down to D29 near Borger, because this site remains relatively untouched and the bottom layer of the tumulus is still intact. They did something that has never been done before in a hundred years of dolmen research: they sifted the sand. The result?
‘We found bone fragments!’ he says, while holding up a few plastic bags containing minuscule charred lumps. Analysis will have to show whether the fragments are animal or human. It’s also unclear whether the fragments even date back to the time of the dolmen creators. They might be from a thousand years later. ‘Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. Whatever the answer, it will provide us with new insights.’
The team also found pottery shards, cast-off from flint tools, and a floor made from red cobbles.
Findings like these show that dolmens were an integral part of the community at the time. ‘Those bone fragments came from the top layer on the edge of the tumulus. At one time, someone thought it was important to put them there. The same goes for the pottery. They dug a little hole, smashed the beaker, and put the shards in the hole. They covered it with a flint knife and filled the rest of the hole with shards.’
Sharpening tools
Because of these findings, Raemaekers thinks dolmen were places that people visited more than once. ‘The only conclusion I can draw is that people would sit on the tumulus to sharpen their flint tools. These places were much livelier than we thought even ten years ago.’
These places were much livelier than we thought even ten years ago
The location of the dolmen also supports this theory: in between patches of sandy soil where people lived and worked and the low stream valleys that were of mystical significance. ‘We know this from the ritual deposits of things like flint axes we found there.’ The dolmens are located in the area between the two.
This matches an old anthropological concept: that people were given a different role in society after they died. They say goodbye to the world of the living and become part of the world of their ancestors.
Finally, it’s also clear that the special role that tombs played in society didn’t change when the Funnelbeaker culture ended and was replaced by the Single Grave culture. Raemaekers and his colleagues have found evidence of activities and rituals that date back to a thousand years beyond this shift.
Single grave
The past few years, he’s been trying very hard to find a single grave in the vicinity of a dolmen. ‘A dolmen is the culmination of all these ritual acts’, he says. ‘But you can’t tell how many beakers were for a single person.’ Unlike a dolmen, a single grave will have this information.
Raemaekers collaborates with colleagues from Ghent who use ground-penetrating radar to look for places in the soil that are wetter than the rest. ‘That indicates there used to be a hole there.’
Once, he thought he’d hit pay dirt when one such place was found near Valthe, the perfect location. ‘For a second, I thought this was it’, says Raemaekers.
Unfortunately, it turned out they’d only found a tree trunk. So Raemaekers keeps hoping. And speculating. ‘I’d love to have a time machine like they do in the comics. I want to look over these people’s shoulders and just be able to ask them why they do certain things.’