Talk:Dyss

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The Danish term is "dysse" or "stendysse" in the singular, not "dyss". It is equivalent to the English term "dolmen" (from French). The earliest dysser were single graves consisting of two side-stones, two end-stones, and a capstone. Calibrated C14 dating suggests that they were being built around 3500 BC. The stone dysser succeeded earlier wooden chambers placed in long earthen mounds comparable to the earthen long barrows in Britain. The stones are granite erratic boulders, cleaved to produce a flat surface facing inwards. They were also placed in long rectangular earthen mounds, sometimes enlargements of earlier mounds without stone chambers, and are therefore known as "langdysser". The mounds are surrounded by quite large, usually uncleaved curbstones, selected from the locally available erratics, therefore being mostly granite, with occasional examples of other igneous rocks such as gneiss or porphyry. These curbstones may be taller at the ends than at the sides of the mound. Within the mound there may be one or more of the stone burial chambers described, orientated either longitudinally or transversely. At about the same time, single stone burial chambers were also placed in circular mounds surrounded by curbstones; these are known as "runddysser". Some runddysser are characterized by particularly impressive curbstones. The mounds could be extended to allow the addition of more burial chambers, so that some langdysser incorporate an earlier runddysse, or have been extended lengthwise in one or more phases. They may therefore contain stone chambers of different types.

From 3500 BC to 3200 BC there was a trend towards the construction of larger stone burial chambers, with more side-stones and an entrance, sometimes with a short passage, allowing the chamber to be used for multiple burials, or maybe rather as ossiaries for the deposition of skeletal remains. In later langdysser, these chambers may be orientated so that their short passages lead in an easterly or south-easterly direction to the perimeter at the long side of the mound, which is thus often orientated in a north-south or northeast-southwest direction. This is clearly a transitional form to the megalithic passage graves, known as "jættestuer" (giants' chambers), usually dated to about 3200 BC. The jættestuer have larger chambers with multiple capstones and a passage from the exterior to the middle of the long side of the chamber. They are completely covered by a roundish earthen mound, and while a few have curbstones with intervening dry-stone walling and maybe detectable traces of stone shelves near the entrance to the passage, the curbstones tended to be much less prominent than those surrounding the earlier dysser, and are often absent. One should not suppose that rigid corpses had to be inconveniently dragged through the low and narrow passages for burial in the chamber. Skeletal remains were recovered from previous burial in the "causewayed camps" and placed in the chamber. 1600 years later, the chambers would be reopened and reused by people of a later culture for whole-body burials, often filling the whole chamber, and the passage, with bodies.

The existence of a large number of megalithic tombs in Denmark that show most of the conceivable intermediate forms between dysser and jættestuer in the period 3500 BC to 3200 BC makes it unnecessary to postulate any "cultural revolution" by which dysser were suddenly replaced by jættestuer, and both dysser and jættestuer fit quite well into the general picture of megalithic culture in the western to northern region of Europe. Interestingly, a further transitional form not seen in Denmark, but in north Germany, is the jættestue chamber (i.e. long chamber with multiple capstones) placed within the long perimeter of a langdysse with large curbstones. Uttenthal, Salamanca.87.49.219.10 (talk) 03:33, 14 February 2008 (UTC)