Dutch archaeologists revealed on Wednesday that they had discovered a 4,000-year-old religious site including a burial mound that served as a solar calendar, dubbed the “Stonehenge of the Netherlands” by the media, in reference to the famous megalithic monumental complex. The mound, about 20 meters in diameter, which contained the remains of about 60 men, women and children, had passages through which direct sunlight entered on the longest and shortest days of the year.
The excavations, the results of which were made public on Wednesday, began in 2017 in Tiel, some 50 km southeast of Utrecht. “What an extraordinary archaeological discovery! Archaeologists have discovered a 4,000-year-old religious sanctuary on an industrial site,” the city of Tiel enthused on its Facebook page. “This is the first time that such a site has been discovered in the Netherlands,” said the city. By studying differences in the composition and colors of the clay, archaeologists have located three burial mounds on the site, located a few kilometers from the shores of the Waal.
The passages inside the tumulus made it possible to use it as a solar calendar “to determine important times such as festivals and harvest days”, the archaeologists said. “This hill is reminiscent of Stonehenge, the famous and mysterious prehistoric monument in England, where this phenomenon also occurs,” commented Dutch public broadcaster NOS. Researchers also discovered two other smaller burial mounds. These three mounds were used as burial grounds for some 800 years, according to archaeologists.
Archaeologists have made another sensational discovery: a glass bead inside a burial, which after analysis turned out to be from Mesopotamia, present-day Iraq. “This pearl traveled a distance of some 5,000 kilometers four millennia ago,” research team leader Cristian van der Linde told NOS. “The glass was not made here, the pearl must have been an extraordinary object for people because it was an unknown material,” added Stijn Arnoldussen, from the University of Groningen. But the pearl certainly did not travel from Mesopotamia to the burial site all at once, he says. Items were traded at that time.