Jættestuen Hørret Skov I. Et nyt fund af fodskåle med massiv midtdel

Abstract

The Hørret Skov I passage grave: a new find of pedestalled bowls with solid stem.

In KUML 1958 (1-2) Lili Kaelas published two pedestalled bowls from the Middle Neolithic Funnel Beaker culture of a hitherto unknown type characterized by a solid stem. The normal Nordic pedestalled bowls consist of a round-bottomed bowl placed in a foot of truncated conical shape.

Investigation of a passage grave in Hørret Skov, south of Århus, Jutland (3), revealed another example of the type with a solid stem. The passage grave and its finds will be briefly presented here and the possible European background for this special kind of pedestalled bowl discussed.

Description of the Structure and Finds

Some time during the last century the barrow was bisected by a forest road which destroyed the chamber and left only part of the barrow on either side, but investigation revealed that the floor of the chamber was partially preserved under the road.

The barrow had a diameter of only 9-10 m bordered by 0. 7 m high kerbstones (fig. 1). The chamber, the rear wall of which was approximately in the centre of the mound, was round (diameter 2.7-2.8 m) and constructed of three large orthostats to the north, west and south and three smaller stones, one of which stood in the south-western corner and the other two on either side of the passage opening. This was marked by a threshold stone in situ. The orthostats were represented by a few shattered remains and marks in the soil. The chamber had an outer packing consisting of a mixture of clay and flint and there had been dry walling between the orthostats. The floor of the chamber consisted of bleached, crushed flint. On this was found a thin-bladed axe, a blade, two fragments of amber beads and two sherds (fig. 2a-d,7c).

Of the passage, which was about 3 m long, the outermost southern stone and next-outermost northern stone were preserved in the segment beside the road (fig. 3). All traces of the inner passage stones had been effaced and the outermost northern passage stone had been removed in connection with a disturbance during the Roman Iron Age. There were distinct traces showing that the passage had first been filled with earth, then cleared and later again blocked with stones. In the oldest fill parts of a funnel beaker were found (fig. 7e). The area in front of the passage opening was much disturbed by excavations from the Roman Iron Age. Only a very small area of a couple of sq. m. was unaffected. This yielded the pedestalled bowl with solid stem (fig. 4a), part of the upper part of a pedestalled bowl (fig. 4c), a clay ladle (fig. 4b), a pedestalled bowl with very steep sides (fig. 5) and some sherds of an apparently identical specimen (fig. 7b), an open bowl (fig. 6a), a couple of sherds from vessels with vertical band ornament (fig. 7f and g), the shoulder of a carinated vessel (fig. 7d), and sherds from three funnel beakers (fig. 6b, 7a,h).

The bowl fig. 6a, which on the basis of a rim sherd found in the chamber may with certainty be said to derive from an evacuated grave, is the typologically earliest vessel connected with the barrow. It has parallels in Sarup (4) and Ettrup (5) from the very earliest Middle Neolithic. As the typological distance to the Mogenstrup bowl (6) in certain MN Ib context is not large, however, it is not certain that the bowl should be placed earlier than MN Ib. Of the remaining pottery, the clay ladle and pedestalled bowls fig. 4b and c, fig. 5, and the sherds fig. 7b, d and f may with reasonable certainty be assigned to MN Ib. The pedestalled bowl with solid stem is just as unique in its ornamentation as in its form and does not permit closer dating on a typological basis. It has certain features pointing to Blandebjerg (7-8), but also several pointing to Troldebjerg (9). The nearest we can get is to place it in the first half of the Middle Neolithic Funnel Beaker culture. The barrow must, on the basis of C14 datings elsewhere, have been built about 2600 B.C. (12).

Protected by the mound around the passage grave was a settlement layer containing pottery from at least 9 vessels (fig. 8) and 28 implements of flint including 12 scrapers and 5 knives (fig. 9). The pottery dates this layer to EN non-Megalithic C. A very close parallel is found, for example, in the Rustrup structures near Them, south of Silkeborg (10), which are C14-dated to about 3000 B.C. (11).

Pedestalled bowls with solid stem in Nordic Funnel Beaker Culture

Apart from the Hørret Skov pedestalled bowl, 4 other pedestalled bowls with solid stem are known. They are: Harreby (fig. 10a) (13), Avnevig (fig. 10c) (14-15), Vedsted (fig. 10b) (16, 17) and Schwesing (fig. 10d) (18). Characteristic of these five pedestalled bowls are, apart from the solid stem, an almost identical bowl and foot smoothly growing from the centre, very small dimensions, no handles, and an ornament which is not found in the normal Nordic pedestalled bowls. These latter also have a sharp junction of the foot and the bowl, are furnished with one or two band-shaped handles and are usually of considerable size (20).

The dating of solid-stemmed pedestalled bowls is difficult, because their decoration does not correspond to that of the ordinary bowls. From the decoration employed, the Harreby, Schwesing and Avnevig bowls may with reasonable certainty be assigned to MN Ib. The parallels to the Hørret Skov bowl are very ambiguous, and the Vedsted specimen cannot be dated on style. All five bowls were found in connection with megalithic graves where other pottery was also present but there is in no case contextual evidence guaranteeing coevality with any of the other pottery.

Pedestalled bowls in the funnel beaker culture outside the Nordic Area

The ordinary Nordic pedestalled bowl type is not known from the Funnel Beaker culture elsewhere. If we leave out of account the bowls of the western group with a standing-ring (19) we have only a few pedestalled bowls from the western group and the Altmark Tiefstich pottery. These all relate to the solid-stemmed pedestalled bowls from the Nordic area.

From Oldendorf, Kr. Lüneburg, we have an undecorated bowl identical to the Nordic bowl in shape and construction (fig. 11 b) (22). This is part of a closed find with i.a. a shouldered vessel, which is parallelized by Sprockhoff with Blandebjerg (24), but which on account of various similarities may more convincingly be linked with MN Ib shouldered vessels (26, 27), as H. Knøll has recently done (28).

A pedestalled bowl from a megalithic grave at Kloster is almost identical to the Oldendorf specimen (29).

A pedestalled bowl from the megalithic grave D 19 near Drouwen consists of hemispherical bowl and foot connected by a solid stem and further connected by two ribbon-shaped handles (fig. 11d) (31).

From a megalithic grave Elspeet B in Gelderland comes a solid stem to a pedestalled bowl (32).

A pedestalled bowl has recently been found in an earth grave at Issendorf, Kr. Stade (33), consisting of two undecorated spherical bowls joined base to base and connected with a single band handle (fig. 11e). In the same grave were two shouldered vessels of exactly the same type as the one from Oldendorf, a richly ornamented bowl, a funnel beaker, a clay ladle and a clay disc. This complex may with certainty be placed in Knøll's transitional phase 1/2 and i.a. on account of the shouldered vessels must be coeval with MN Ib (34).

Of these five pedestalled bowls, those from Oldendorf, Kloster and perhaps Elspeet B show greatest similarity to the solid-stemmed Nordic bowls. The Drouwen bowl has also considerable features in common with these, but differs with the two large band-shaped handles and a sharper junction between stem and foot and bowl. The Issendorf bowl is even more remote from the Nordic specimens, but has with its two spherical bowls and band-shaped handle certain similarities to the Drouwen bowl.

Pedestalled bowls with solid stem seen in Central European Context

The pedestalled bowl is a complete newcomer to Scandinavia in the early Middle Neolithic, and it is therefore only natural that the impulses for this special form have been sought in Central Europe, where it was in use throughout the entire Neolithic (37). Furthermore, as the pedestalled bowl is in many Central European cultures, just as in the Nordic area, typically a grave vessel (for example Tizapolgár, Bodrogkeresztúr (38)), and as ladles (of bone) are also found associated with pedestalled bowls (39), it is difficult to ignore the Central European background for the Nordic pedestalled bowls.

Lili Kaelas found a close parallel to the Harreby and Avnevig pedestalled bowls in a fragment from the Linear Pottery settlement of Sittard in Holland (40). The similarity is very great, especially to the Hørret Skov bowl, but as the Sittard fragment is associated with the middle phase of the Linear Pottery culture in Holland with a dating of about 4200-4300 B.C. and is thus 1700-1800 C14 years remote from the Danish solid-stemmed pedestalled bowls, a connection must be ruled out (41).

Kaelas found it most likely, however, that the Harreby and Avnevig bowls were derived from the Jordanow culture, where we as in other late Lengyel groups find a few pedestalled bowls which resemble the Nordic ones with solid stem (42). She went so far as to update Jordanow, which has always previously been considered parallel to EN C, to MN Ib (43). Jordanow must, though, on the basis of its connections to other cultures, be dated to between 3200 and 2800 B.C. (44) and a connection with Nordic MN thus seems to be ruled out.

However, pedestalled bowls very similar to our own with solid stem do occur in slightly later cultures in Central Europe. A couple of bowls from Groitzch and Riesa-Gröba in the Halle area of central Germany exhibit a distinct morphological similarity to the Danish bowls (fig. 12a-b) (45). Both are loose finds and can, as both form and ornament are unique in the area, not be assigned to any of the central German Funnel Beaker groups. But they can be connected with cultural groups further south and south-east, from where they may have been if not imported at least imitated.

The Groitzch bowl is associated -with an undecorated loose-found pedestalled bowl with star foot also from the Halle region (46)- with the so-called Slavonic cultural horizon, which occurs as an element in the Rivnac-Jevisovice B culture of Bohemia-Moravia and in the Kostalac phase of the Baden culture of Slovakia (47). Further south we find it in its pure form around the rivers Sava and Drava (48).

The Slavonic cultural horizon should, however, be dated as late as around 2300 B.C. (49) and cannot therefore be the precursor of the Nordic pedestalled bowls with solid stem.

The Riesa-Gröba bowl, which is the one which seems to show the greatest similarity to the Danish bowls, is by Mildenberg and Behrens (50) i.a. on the basis of its decoration linked with certain pedestalled bowls from the classical Baden phase of Hungary (Baden-Pécél), where they are known in particular from a cemetery at Budakalász (fig. 12e-f) (51). These small bowls with their solid stem constitute clear parallels to the Nordic bowls and as the classical Baden phase should apparently be dated to around 2400-2600 B.C. (52) there is a real possibility of derivation. The same applies to many small pedestalled bowls with solid stem (fig. 12c-d) occurring in the Laibach finds of north-western Yugoslavia, the older part of which seem to be coeval with the classical Baden phase (53).

Is it now reasonable to derive solid-stemmed pedestalled bowls in the Nordic Funnel Beaker culture from cultures which, although they have in their repertoire the same kind of bowl at exactly the same time, lie about 500 miles distant as the crow flies? This may, of course, be doubted, but a derivation from western Hungary, the eastern Alpine region and north-western Yugoslavia is not unlikely, because we have through the Danish copper finds of the previous period certainty for a direct connection from this very area (54). Furthermore, other pottery coeval with MN Ib also indicates a connection with Baden. This applies first and foremost to the shouldered vessel with oversized handle from the Oldendorf find (55) (fig. 11c). While the bowl itself is a local Tiefstich form, the handle is a clear imitation of exactly equivalent handles in the classical Baden phase (56). A shouldered vessel from Barskamp (57) also has an oversized handle, which may be due to Baden influence. The pedestalled bowls from Drouwen and Skovbølling characterized by the long strap handles and the Skovbølling vessel perhaps even without stem may also have Baden pottery as their prototype. From the classical Baden phase we know several vessels consisting of a hemispherical bowl set on three band-shaped handles joined to a small foot (fig. 12g) (58).

All in all, I believe that there is a reasonable basis for believing that there has been a connection between the Nordic Funnel Beaker culture and the Baden culture and that this connection has resulted among other things in the presence of pedestalled bowls with solid stem in the Nordic Funnel Beaker culture. The nature of these connections lies outside the present field of discussion.

It would be tempting to consider the pedestalled bowls with solid stem as representing the true pedestalled bowl impulse to the Nordic area, but this is hardly the case. If so they should have a generally earlier dating than the traditionel pedestalled bowls, and there is nothing to indicate that this is so. On the contrary, it seems to be a case of largely parallel types. It is not the intention here to discuss the traditional pedestalled bowls and their origin, but certain difficulties in their normal derivation from Jordanow (59), "Oder-Stichband" (60) or perhaps even both in conjunction (61) must be pointed out. If the "Oder-Stichband" as Driehaus has pointed out (62) must be associated with Lengyel IV influenced groups like Gatersleben, Ottitz and Moravian unpainted, then it must be placed before 3200 B.C., the Lengyel IV groups in central Germany, Silesia and Bohemia forming a horizon which is earlier than Baalberg and Jordanow (63). A Gatersleben dating from Kmehlen of 3410±160 B.C. emphasizes this (64). This chronological placement of "Oder-Stichband" pottery is supported by the distribution in the lowlands between the Oder and the Elbe. Here we find the "Danubian" cultures and the Mesolithic cultures differ in their distribution, whereas the "oldest Funnel Beaker culture" occurs throughout the area i.a. with a strong concentration in precisely the area from which the "Danubian" finds derive (65). The "Oder-Stichband" pottery thus seems to be excluded from all connection with the Middle Neolithic. The Jordanow circumstances have already been discussed and the conclusion was that a connection manifesting itself in the pedestalled bowls of MN I is rather unlikely. On the whole one must say that derivations from the late Lengyel complexes to the early Middle Neolithic Funnel Beaker culture on purely chronological evidence are not convincing.

Torsten Madsen