Die Ausgrabungen am Megalithgrab von Beckum-Dalmer

Leo Klinke was the project manager of the project Megalithic in Westphalia in the year of the conference. The age-old commission for Westphalia and he was the excavation manager for the excavation at Megalith Grab Beckum 2. Unfortunately, he has now jumped off the flag, because he is now a scientific reference in the prospecting department of the Rhineland Landscape Association. There he is responsible for the archaeological evaluation of the geophysical prospecting data and the definition of presumed ground monuments in the Rhineland, the subsequence of Hans Goller. Dear Leo, I would like to ask you and expect an interesting lecture. Thank you very much for the introductory words. Exactly, I am reporting on the last year's activities and the results of the Megalithic project, the second phase of the Megalithic project, which I was allowed to oversee as project manager until the end of the last calendar year. Specifically, it is about the excavation at the Megalith Grab from Beckum Dalma, the so-called Megalith Grab Beckum 2. This is, as I said, a cooperation project of the LWL Archaeology for Westphalia, with the external office Münster and the age-old commission for Westphalia. The whole within the framework of the European project Megalithic Roots. Why is the Megalithic Grab Beckum 2 or the so-called Beckumer Group, which you see in the heart of Westphalia, so of special importance? Because in Westphalia, in the northern area, we have the Trichterbecher culture and in the southern area the Wartberg culture. It is practically a megalithic lucky charm in Westphalia. And the Beckumer Group is exactly in this border area of ​​these two cultures. And if you look at the left side of the graph, you see the individual red dots, which describe where the Trichterbecher graves are and the blue dots describe the graves of the Wartberg culture. You see, the Beckumer Group is marked in blue, but due to the close contact, the question has always been whether the Beckumer Group really belongs to the Wartberg culture or whether we have a grave of the Trichterbecher culture in front of us. The tasks of our excavation in the last year were to clarify this. And now first of all an introduction. What is characteristic of an excavation or a grave site of the Trichterbecher culture? You just mentioned the northern Trichterbecher culture, named after the characteristic vessels with a funnel neck edge and the deep-cut ceramic. And now a brief report from the excavation of the previous year, i.e. 2020, where we were able to carry out a minimally invasive excavation at the Megalitgrab Kleines Lobst. Characteristic is that we were already able to clarify architecture with a comparatively tiny section, but in this section we were also able to find ceramic, which I just showed you. And you see, in this area in the planum, deep-cut ceramic is already visible. And this is very characteristic for the excavation of the Trichterbecher culture. At the same time, we see on the upper found that the Megalitgräber are preserved in abundance. How can we imagine a Trichterbecher Megalitgrab? At the top left you can see the state of the large sloped stones as we see them today. Virtual archaeological research indicates that the Megalitgräber were visible in abundance, covered with an earthen hill and looked more like houses for eternity and were visible in the landscape. Now excavations on the Wartberg culture, the Megalitgrab Wevelsburg II, which we were able to dig in 2018. We see a significantly different excavation site. The architecture is poorly preserved. We see it has been flied over. But every yellow dot you see is the proof of a bone. So we have a very good bone preservation. Ceramic is only minimally present and the architecture is mostly destroyed. But we can point out that the Wartberg culture graves were buried in the ground. So in contrast to the Trichterbecher graves, which were visible at the top, the Wartberg graves were half buried in the ground. With an earthen hill, both were overhilled. This means that the Megalithic architecture could not be seen from the outside, but implicated itself only through the earthen hill. In addition to the graves of the Trichterbecher culture, a stone wreath was erected on the outside of smaller stones. What do we have in Beckum now? For this we have applied digital conservation, which we were able to carry out in the context of the project with all the Megalithic graves preserved in Westphalia. For this we have applied the structure from motion or image-based modeling process, where we were able to generate three-dimensional point clouds based on high-resolution photographs, laser-precise, with which we were then able to create 3D models. On the next slide you can see what the Megalithic grave looks like from the air. It is now in an oak grove, in a small old oak forest. And we can't do this flight that we are currently seeing, because there is leaves and branches everywhere. That means a drone cannot fly there. And now in the virtual we can take a look at the grave from the air. Completely new insights that the new research now enables us. What we already see is the entrance in this area. It is an entrance, i.e. a real corridor of the entrance. And via this we enter the tomb chamber, or formerly the tomb chamber. It is quite long. And we will see in a moment what stands out, it is aligned on the north side. The whole grave is where flies are flying around impressively. The whole grave is made of large findlings, which came to Westphalia with the penultimate ice age. They were collected in the Jungstein period and built to these large monuments. Now let's take a look at what the grave from the air looks like. Now not in the dynamic of the video animation, but a star on a map. On the left side you see the grave or a plan, not a burial plan, a plan that goes back to the measurements of the middle of the 19th century, when this grave was already taken from the Prussian state under, at that time not yet conserved according to monumental law, but under monumental wish. But it is a beautified, idealized drawing, which confuses more than it reflects the real expression of the grave. Because we now see in the high resolution measurement, the grave is not bent at all, as it originally seemed, but it is a long rectangular tomb chamber with this long entrance to the north side, about in the middle of the north side. You have already seen it in orange encircled or encased. And here again are measures from 1970. Because in 1970, not mentioned with the Bodenckmalpflege excavations were carried out to clarify whether further measures have taken place. Because we found an edge of the terrain, we made a search cut in this area to clarify whether further excavation measures were taking place there. Here you see the measure, oops. Here you see the measure, how small the real cut 2 was. And you see the protective equipment. It has nothing to do with Corona and DNA analysis, but with the oak procession spinner, which has massively affected us in the world here. The result of these excavations was that we were able to determine that on the western side the ground was disturbed, also outside of the measures marked in 1970. That means there was at least another investigation in the memorial, which has actually been protected for 150 years. It was still in situ on the east side. Then further in the southern area of ​​the Megalith Grave we made the cut 3. And there we really found a sensational result, namely bone retention. Very, very good bone retention. And that, in turn, is more characteristic of the Wartberg culture, but is more based on the soils. We have rather heavy soils there in southern Westphalia and the sandy soils with poor bone retention in northern Westphalia or also in northern Germany, where the Trichterbecher culture has spread. We see that these bones are not in situ, but in the excavation of the measures of 1970. And then we carried out other non-invasive investigation measures. Prospection, similar to what is now being evaluated in the Rhineland, geophysical prospection, here the ground radar, which colleague Joris Kohlen carried out. And you can see the result here. We see a deep disc model, an animation of the deep discs. We now look from top to bottom into the ground and see anomalies along the cut, which is already marked here. The deeper we go, the more interesting the anomalies seem to be, long right-angled. There we made a search cut. And now let's take a look at the whole thing in the map, in the engraving, the contrasts higher, so you can all see it much better. Red is high resistance, that is, in the northern area around the burial chamber, around the entrance, high anomalies have been detected. And in the find, it turns out that not the single find is exciting, but the B find is exciting, that is, the context. We have a massive flow of limestone. And if we look at that again now, we see how many limestones are in the engraving of the burial find. And in the find on site, we see that it is located on an edge of the terrain, ascending to the grave. And from this it can be reconstructed that the grave was originally covered with white limestone. It was halfway into the ground, we could see that on the other side, similar to the Wartberg culture. And overhanging white and bright in the landscape, visible as prominently as it is known for the graves of the Trichterbecher culture. So let's summarize now what the important results of this excavation were. So not only that we now better understand the ground monument itself, the impact of the last decades, years, centuries, but also what cultural and historical significance the Beckumer group has within the context of European megalithic. Because in northern Westphalia, the Trichterbecher culture, in southern Westphalia, the Wartberg culture. Beckum is a hybrid of both, so much in advance, because we have a trench similar to the Trichterbecher culture, the long trench I pointed out. However, the trench is oriented northwest, to the northeast, which is uncharacteristic, because the Trichterbecher graves regularly have a central entrance to the south side. For Wartberg graves, the entrance to the northeast is quite possible. However, the graves of the Wartberg culture are more likely to be made of sand and limestone plates and not of northern slabs, as the Trichterbecher graves have. The orientation, west-northwest, east-southeast, is quite possible for both. It was built in a recessed manner, clearly, as with the Wartberg culture, the abundance of ceramics. We only found four fragments of ceramics, and that indicates the Wartberg culture. The good bone preservation is local, but is also similar to the Wartberg culture. From all this abundance of findings, it is now possible to reconstruct that the Beckerumer group stood between two worlds, between the Trichterbecher culture and the Wartberg culture, and was not detached from both. However, it is noticeable that we are now moving a little further north and south, where very clear, distinguished, i.e. limited finding contexts prevail, and in the Beckerumer group, a hybrid of both worlds is present. I look forward to discussions, which will now follow in the chat, but for everyone watching this lecture in the can on YouTube, you can find my contact information here, and I look forward to you talking to me by e-mail if you are interested. Thank you very much!