Tustrup Dolmens North Djursland

Tustrup Stone Age Grave site 

 

Most of our visible prehistoric memories are usually spread separately in the landscape,  but on a small plateau west of Tustrup village at North Djursland is another kind of memory from our ancient history. Here is a collection of grave monuments from Bondestenalderen, the socalled Tragtbægerkultur (Funnelbeaker-culture) . 

Bondestenalderen /Neolithic or New Stone Age marks the start of agriculture and domestic animals in Denmark. The period is known for its milled stone axes, fine ceramics and many of the numerous gravehills spread in the Danish landscape. 

The brook

When the grave site was in use about 5000 year since the landscape looked quite different. It was covered in hardwood forest which the Stone Age people was clearing for their fields. The brook was then a big water stream which a few kilometer away run out in a fjord-system connecting the sound with the sea of Kattegat. Some hills nearby were then an island in the Stone Age ocean, and the coast of Djursland was like a Swedish archipelago with small islands, sounds, isthmus, fjords and inlets.

The cult house (5x5,5 m) with an open northeast gable was probably the center of the activities of the grave site. Upon the floor by the back wall were found 28 pretty clay pots, identical to the ceramics which partly gave name to the Tragtbægerkultur and partly were used as sacrifices in front of the house and in the dolmens and the passage grave. The cult house is interpreted as some kind of temple where the diseased were placed while their graves were built -  and in which the rites were performed. Similar cult houses have later been found in other Danish localitities. 

At Moesgaard Museum by Aarhus are the finds shown in an exhibition and in a nearby field close to the beach is a reconstruction of the cult house. 

The passage grave has a 3x 10 m grave chamber.  It was built as a common grave and was used both  by the Tragtbægerkulturen and later cultures. Into the grave chamber leads a 6 m long passage . The passage was earlier covered with big stones like in the grave chamber. The stones are very large and impressive and the pasasage gave at Tustrup represents a giant working process.  Over 40 large stones between 1/2 and 20 tons were used in the building.

In the floor of the grave chamber's northern end are some flat stones which might be a mark for graves reserved for special people. In the passage grave is a special chamber which is popular among children. They can climb into a side chamber by the help of a flashlighr. Similar side chambers are found in only 26 out of 700 left passage graves in Denmark. The side chamber was built at the same time as the main chamber. There might be a purpose. Maybe it was reserved for the chief and his family ?

The two other big stone graves at Tustrup are

dolmens with polygonal grave chambers. The dolmens are traditionally considered as  forerunners of the big passage grave, but the ceramic-finds in the excavations were of the same character in both the cult house and the passage grave, so the graves must have been in use at the same time.

Northwest of the cult house is a freestanding dolmen chamber with 5 of originally 6 cover stones and a short chamber passage with 2 cover stones. In the floor  between the passage and the chamber is a socalled tærskelsten  (threshold stone) which marks where the inner wood- or stone door was placed. 

The fine round dolmen southeast of the cult house has no chamber passage. The opening to the chamber is just a space between 2 of 5 cover stones of the chamber. The round dolmen was restored in 1994 and rebuilt  according to the earlier excavations in order to give the visitor the experience of an intact round dolmen, contrarily to the rather desolated dolmen chamber. Along the foot of the earth hill which surrounds the chamber stand 13 big edge stones with a fine dry wall. The cover stone above the chamber and parts of the dry wall and the earth hill were added in 1994, and outside the chamber opening lies a stone from the dolmen with clear cleaving traces from present stone work in the area. Large stones were always a sought after building material. Maybe already used in the building of the nearby ashlar church in Nørager and as gravel in local roads or railways. 

Besides the prehistorics the Tustrup area has a pretty nature with marked paths and a primitive overnight/shelter close to the information-building at the western parking. The area undergoes constant natural care in order to restore a vegetation which harmonizes best possible with the vegetation of Stone Age and in order to visualize the varied landscape of the area. .

 

a creative farmer of today has made fine graphics in the field.

reconstructed cult house, Moesgaard, Aarhus.

Source Danske Fortidsminder/ Danmarks Kulturarvs Forening 


photo Tustrup-dysserne 2002 og 2015:  grethe bachmann

The Tustrup Dolmens , Djursland

Dolmens from Stone Age



At one of the grave chambers

Bondestenalderen in Denmark began 4.000 år B.C. and lasted until 1700 B.C. The period got its name because the Danish population began to cultivate the land and keep live stock. They had the inspiration from the south, where people had been peasants for a long time.
Bondestenalder = Peasant Stone Age

For the people from Bondestenalderen were the dead not separated from the living. The ancestors lived among their descendants in large stone built houses, built as a symbol of the eternal presence of the ancestors and the family's right to the land. Inside the dark grave chamber lay the skulls of the dead and other bones, an object of the worship from the living.

Their ceremonies ar not known, but there were probably some burial ceremonies, like grief rituals, moans and sacrificial ceremonies, where they perhaps prepared the transfer of the dead to the grave chamber. And this might have happened in special cult houses or at a large central place, maybe in both places. The uniform building of the cult houses indicates that they were used in ceremonies widespread among people of Bondestenalderen.


A small grave chamber


Reconstructed cult house (Dødehus) Moesgård Strand
photo 2003: gb

The Tustrup dolmens consists of four contemporary plans from ab. 3.330 B.C. ; two polygonic dolmen chambers, a passage grave and a cult house. The culthouse was the most sensational part of the excavation in 1954. It is placed in the centre of the area in proportion to the three large stone graves. Its outer wall is preserved; it is a horseshoe-shaped stone circle of ab. 1 m high stones with a 1 m thick face wall in field stones. From the inner wall were found traces of charred oak planks. The opening of the building turns away from the stone graves, facing northeast and the rising sun. A stone block in the middle of the opening might have had a cultic function, but it might also just have been supporting the turfed roof. In the middle of the building was a sand filled hollow, around it were the rests of not less than 28 beautifully decorated sacrificial vessels, 10 vessels with a high foot and each with a clay spoon. (exhibition Moesgård Museum).

Tustrup cult house is reconstructed by the archaeologists at Moesgård Museum and placed upon a field close to the beach and the outflow of Giberåen. (river). The Tustrup-house is the only reconstructed cult house, but there have been found traces of about ten cult houses in Jutland. Some of them were burnt down like the Tustrup-house, probably as a part of the cult service.


The passage grave

Tustrup passage grave is the largest among the small east Jutland passage graves. The well-preserved chamber is 10 m long, and behind the chamber is a small side chamber, which else is mostly known from the Limfjord-area. In the passage grave were found some bones and an amber pearl, and outside the entrance were several clay vessels, similar to the vessels in the cult house and at the entrance of the other two dolmens.


The cult house , horseshoe shaped.

Some of the cult houses were placed close to the stone graves. They were small, but solid houses.
The foundations were horseshoe-shaped or square, and the gable of the house was open, eventually with a front room. The area was often 5 x 6 m. Sometimes the building was built in the same technique like the stone graves. The Tustrup house was built like this with walls in large stones, outside packed with flat stone tiles. They formed a facade of meter high flat blocks. The walls inside were built in down-digged planks, while the roof was supported by heavy, vertical posts in the middle of the house.


Entrance to the cult house

An important part of the sacrificial ceremonies might have been the use of the pretty large vessels with matching spoons. The ceremonial clay vessels are some of the finest ceramics known from the period. It also seems to be a part of the rituals that the houses after a period of use were burnt down, and the vessels weres crushed by the falling roof. After the destruction the houses were just left to be.


Entrance to the passage grave.

It might be that the cult houses were just a temporary whereabout for the dead, who later on was put to rest in the grave chamber. And maybe people of the settlement prepared for the final burial ceremony, which went on at the passage grave.

Source:
Ingrid Falktoft Andersen: Vejviser til Danmarks Oldtid, Wormianum 1994.
Jørgen Jensen : I Begyndelsen, Gyldendal og Politikens Danmarkshistorie, 1992

photo Tustrup/Moesgård 2003/2009: grethe bachmann