Sieben Steinhäuser

The Sieben Steinhäuser also Siebensteinhäuser is a group of five dolmens on the Lüneburg Heath in the NATO training area of Bergen-Hohne, in the state of Lower Saxony in northern Germany [1]. The Sieben Steinhäuser gravesite was established during the third millennium BC during the Neolithic funnelbeaker period by the first settled farmers [1]. Although they are traditionally called the Sieben Steinhäuser ("seven stone houses") there are actually only five graves [1]. The first written record of the graves was made in 1720 by an academic [1]. The burial chambers are all rectangular and aligned in a northeast-southwest direction [1]. Their capstones are not of bay construction, but almost always supported by three or four points of contact [1]. All the graves were originally covered with earth, so that they would have looked like earth mounds or tumuli [1]. Four graves were excavated and restored between 1924 and 1937 [1].