Slab cist/ wedge tomb of Dal

Slab cist/ wedge tomb of Dal

Here we look at the special case Dal's slab cists of which we have three types. The rectangular from France, the wedge shaped from the Alps and the cist with gable hole probably from Caucasus. The occurrence of slab cists show a various pattern in Sweden. It is easier to comment types we know of since we normally discuss only the ideas here.

slab cist, Carnac, wedge tomb, megalith, amulet, sickle, dagger, rock carvings, megalith, dead house, ritual bath,

Slab cist of Dal | People of the dagger | Finds slab cists | Isis context |Wedge tomb / slab cist |

Part 1 Stones - The Vi | Part 2 dolmen - cists | Part 3 doomring - thing | Part 4  Olympos of Nordal | sitemap rock-carvings| sitemap stones | home |

On the small island Bjorkaun the cist stands directly on the rock on a low mound. Slightly wedge shaped 6 x 1,8 - 1,5 m and the gable was originally open

Most of the cists are partly under ground. Others are covered by a mound that could be the ritual purpose of "going beneath". On the island is only around 50 cm clay on the rocky ground however the slabs were dug down to 40 cm. The whole island is clay shale and by now very eroded. Before excavating the cist was fallen together and sunken but there was a clear low mound around it.

This type we find for instance at Ireland se below. Per definition this kind of tomb is made of slabs. We can speculate about the technique maybe coming from Egypt. However West Europe have been working with stone for very long just to mention Le Grand Menhir and Carnac in France where a lot of stones have been shaped. The menhir was cut out from a rock and transported to the place. However such technique could be forgotten and come again as a new fashion.

In this case it seem to be a new fashion. It would be natural that metallurgists knew everything about stone and rocks and also simple techniques to blast slabs from the rock or mountain. The normal would be that they made holes and drove wet wooden wedges in the whole. Much the same as when splitting trees. As ritual act it is much like "going into the Lady" On Ireland they have found that "copper people" made the wedge shaped tomb … se below.

People often want to make things beautiful and that is surely why we the mounds and the small stones around the edge then marking the special ritual room inside the edge. Such things are always depending on the size of population how much work they will put into it. Naturally the place and accessibility of stone also sets the limits.

 The Greenhult with entrance chamber and gable hole

No wonder that monuments are disappearing once they look like a quarry. Only a few are restored then most of them are sinking into Mother Earth again. Near the two cists of Bramre Kari I found the quarry and I understand that they would not carry them longer than necessary since the biggest slab is 5,2 x 2,1 metres in size or maybe 4 tons. That should be related to the sparsely populated Dal with many cists in the area.

My final conclusion is that the cists were used only for funerals since we can see that ritual was based on ritual bath in that period. On Dal we are fortunate since we can see a pattern in the artefacts and the entire configuration of the culture of about 100 cists. On east Dal they are spread over the land as if they were made one or two for each parish with a distance of around 6 kilometres between each. We have some in pair and "brotherhood" is significant for Dal.

We see even the brotherhood in the collection of artefact in the cists. There is usually 1 amulet, 2 sickles and 2 daggers as if they were made for a ritual and that the cist was used as a symbolic place.

Most important is that we surely can connect the great rock-carvings at Evenstorp to the slab-cist period. The amulet, dagger and pairhood make associations to the Levant easy. At that time the Naked was in fashion and also the two law-men, brotherhood and the two Asvins = helpers in agriculture, i.e. fertilizer and watering

The Law Rock at Haugsbyn make us think about agreement between herds and cultivators. The ritual of the Naked seems to be a variant of the Isis-ritual with ritual bath as the act. It is still in practise in Rajasthan India as the Gangaur feast in spring. They tell that the cists are near water, but I think that was natural in the ancient landscape with natural ditching. Most important must have been that it had to be a dry place with drainage and near the settlement.

The crescent shaped sickle and dagger are significant as artefacts in the slab cists. In my little province they have found around 350 flint sickles and we are on the fourth place in that competition in Sweden. We have also around 100 slab cists. The heydays can be dated to a period with finds of seed pollen 2300 to 2100 BC. Why do I mention the sickle first?

We have to understand their thinking. The sickle was an important invention. So important that they in Caucasus made a special myth about the sickle. Compare it with the song about the pickaxe in Sumer. They were new necessary inventions for progress.

Another invention here is the making of slabs that needed a special technique to work with wedges and water in the mountains. Some scientists tell that the technique came to Scandinavia from the Paris district. However we have also the same kind of slabs in the Alps and in Caucasus. Maybe we should go farther to Egypt where the real artists with big stones were found a few hundred years earlier.

Here on Dal we can date them to a period of trials in agriculture 2300 - 2100 BC. They are spread widely as if it was a pattern of small village with their own shrine. In my parish there have been at least 14 cists in 9 places. Some of them are in pair. A few of them are in rocky places and not near suitable land for agriculture. The cist type was maybe used for a long time but we have no sure data. After the cist came a period with cremation and that does not leave much remains. Even in the Bronze Age mounds of stone there are sometimes a small cist.

The technology of making these cists was an innovation as they learned to make slabs out of rock. I found a quarry near the cists of Bramre Kari in Holm. They tell her to be a siren of the woods ... I believe in old folklore, because when I walked through the woods I heard bullets whine in my ears. She wanted to scare me off and to go home, I guess ... or could someone have taken my baldhead as the back of a roebuck?

The slabs come from the rocks only some 50 metres from the two cists. The biggest slab weigh approximately about 4000 kilos and 5 x 1,2 metres. Big stones our ancestors had handled before but the technique to blast off a slab was new.

We have three main types of cists among more than 100 cists on Dal. Only 75 can be defined and the rest are only noting that they have existed. Unfortunately we know nothing about the cist near the Law Rock at Haugsbyn, but the cists near Evenstorp are well documented.

Naturally these belongs to the megalith culture and generally dated to 2300 BC for the big type. Most frequent is the rectangular slab cist type of which we have 62 and 9 of them have entrance chamber and in 3 cases there is gable hole. We have 9 wedge shaped slab cists = wedge tomb as they say. and the special shapes are spread all over Dal. Naturally we know nothing about those "maybe"-cists that have been in the big villages Fraendefors and Mellerud. Anyhow we can speculate about different fashions and origin of the shapes.

Characteristic for Dal is that we have a dozen known pairs or every fourth are in pair. Some of them are near each other while others are within the same property. In every third pair one of them has been/ is covered with a mound. That can indicate it was meant to symbolise the earlier "go beneath"-temples or passage graves. Then it has been for the growers while the other has been for cattle people in the "brotherhood" of a parish of those days.

Another feature is that every third pair is oriented in 90-degree angle. NE to SW is maybe the extreme of the moon while NW to SE is midwinter solstice. N to S can also be the solstices while E to W is the equinoxes. Half of all cists are oriented NE to SW while around 15 % is N to S respective NW to SE. The orientation hardly has more than symbolic importance, however we do not know for sure how they looked in those days. There may have been additional features as for instance in Denmark we see some stone rows and maybe remains after poles in connection with passage graves.

There are no passage graves on Dal while in other places there may have been continuity to the slab cists. On Dal it looks like a totally new fashion. However the spread of the cists seem to follow earlier ritual "counties/ parishes" since there are finds of older ritual axes / chisels and picks as indication. The rectangular cist seem to have been used only as "dead-house" while the passage graves were temples for funeral and the growers. Both the big rock-carvings at Evenstorp and Haugsbyn tell about a new ritual. Maybe they practised ritual bath instead of "going beneath" as seen on the Law Rock.

Some cists have been fairly untouched and they have found the same kind of remains near them as in the front of passage graves. It tells about some feast or as we still say "grave beer" at the funeral. It is mainly black soil after meal, ceramics and broken flint. Maybe they ritually "broke the axe" or knocked the dead into stone = eternity. I think it is a beautiful thought when a member leaves the tribe and root.

The type with entrance chamber slab cist has the simple ground-plan of the early temple. We find it in Sumer as well as in the late Bible. To that we can add the forecourt around the temple which in this case usually is the fence of small stone around the oval mound or enhancement around the cist. A few Danish places may have been a wooden temple in the same configuration.

The wedge shaped cist occurs for instance in the Alps, France and on Ireland. Probably the symbolic shape has been derived from the dagger of Isis in the Alps. For instance in Aosta, Italy and even the Skabersjau Vi have the shape of the dagger blade or wedge. In Aosta they have concluded that the place was used for funerals. There were signs of ritual ploughing however they found no signs of cultivating at the settlement.

We meet a few signs of ritual symbolism with daggers or axes oriented toward underground and the sky in the act of protecting the corn or life at the place. Maybe also the amulet is symbol for "going beneath". In the Alps are rock-carvings showing daggers for pure ritual use to be carried around. We have to understand their ritual symbolism by which they used the special items or shapes to show the essentials of the ritual act/ detail of coming work. They were foregoing the real work in season.

The wedge shape was natural also convenient for pointing at the right direction and also to the sky. We know that the orientations in the pyramids are against celestial objects as for instance toward Orion. That was the virtual place of Osiris and the KA-soul flies to that place. We can compare that with finds of bird wings in graves since the time of Neanthertals in some places. Natural our breath ends and seemingly fly away and the human thought need an end point and physical shape of that airy thing.

Around two kilometres south of the Evenstorp rock-carvings there is a pair of slab cists. One of them is wedge shaped 4,1 x 1,5 - 2, 0 metres E - W in 0,6 m high mound 7 m diameter. The " "brother" is on of the biggest on Dal 6,7 x 2,2 m NE - SW oval mound 7 x 11 m and height 0,6 m. We can speculate in a "settlement of brothers" and cultivators and cattle people. On the rock-carvings we also see a pair.

They think that the origin of the ordinary rectangular slab cist could be the Paris region in France. However the wedge shape can have been introduced from the Alps together with the dagger. We have a few rock-carvings of clear Alp style in East Gautland too.

About 70 % of the slab cist with gable hole are found in West Gautland and most of the rest in Smaaland were we find very many cists. From the occurrence we can decide that that was an occasional fashion. The type seems to have roots in Caucasus as shown below. But it could be second hand from the Alps since we find the type of hole in both places.

Observe that the description of Dal's cist correspond to Dal only. Surely most of them have been used for a long time and they cleaned them for bones now and then. They have seen the same pattern on Jutland Denmark. They have also found that the boat axe was used as ritual weapon to second half of third millennium BC. They have found the axe in passage graves as well as in slab cists. In Skaane and Smaaland Sweden the pattern is mixed single graves and settlement graves.

The more I look at the remains of Dal I find it amazing how consistent and homogeneous this small province was from third millennium onward. In the Age of Dagger we see clearly the same customs and organisations in the most parts of the province.

Lately they have found that the Scandinavian Copper Age was from 4500 to 3300 BC. There are none / few finds the next thousand years before the Bronze Age. Then began the search for copper again at the same time as the trade with the Únetice-culture began and at the same time perhaps the wedge shaped cists. We have only three or maybe four with gable hole and entrance chamber on Dal. They are situated in places where we can expect prospecting for copper. … see Prospectors?

Making the slabs was new technique and we have to think about Egypt then building pyramids of big slabs. In sparsely populated Europe they could not afford to put much work on making the fine finish but used the new invention up to their needs. Another question is were some of the prospectors searching for metal since we find cists in the mountains?