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The Megalithic Tombs of Northern Europe1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

G. E. Daniel
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Extract

During the 19th century conclusions of great value concerning the origin and diffusion of the megalithic tombs of Europe were arrived at by the study of a few tombs in various regions : Montelius’s Orienten och Europa marks the culmination of research on these lines. In the last twenty-five years it has been gradually realized that before we can speak with assurance of the many problems which the megalithic tombs involve, before we can disperse what has aptly been called ‘the murky fog surrounding the megalith question’, we must have accurate and detailed regional surveys of the prehistoric burial-chambers of south-western, western and northern Europe. As is well known, such surveys have already been produced in many regions; for example those in Iberia by Obermaier, Vergileio Correia and Pericot y Garcia, and in Brittany by le Rouzic and Forde. In the British Isles we have been exceptionally fortunate in this respect: the work of Crawford and Hencken in England, of Hemp and Grimes in Wales, of Childe in Scotland, and of Estyn Evans in northern Ireland, has made the megalithic tombs of the British Isles better known than those of any comparable region in Europe.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 12 , Issue 47 , September 1938 , pp. 297 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1938

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References

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19 I use the word dolmen throughout here in the Montelian sense of a small single chamber, andwhen I say rectangular or polygonal dolmen I refer to the shape of the chamber and not to thatof the surrounding barrow. The terms runddysser and langdysser I translate here as ‘dolmens in round barrows’ and ‘dolmens in long barrows’ and not ‘round dolmens’ and ‘long dolmens’ as domany archaeologists (e.g., Shetelig and Falk recently in their Scandinavian Archaeology).

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