[EN]From about 3400 to 2850 BC, the peoples of the Western Group of the Funnel Beaker Culture occupied the North European plain between Ámsterdam and Hamburg. In the northern Dutch provinces of Drenthe and Groningen, running along the 'Hondsrug', lie 52 passage graves belonging to this culture. The monuments consist of a number of trilithons that form the burial camber. For some of the chambers there is a passage that, although not very long on one side, also consists of a series of trilithons. An earthen mound originally covered all of the stones. Archaeological studies in the past roughly determined an east-west orientation for the chambers, indicating that the passages are always on the east or south sides of the cambers. However few more detailed sutides are found in the literatura. We have measured the orientation of both the camber and the passage of each grave wherever this is posible. The camber orientations are broadly distributed about east-west with a peak near the equinoxes. It has already been proposed that they may have incorporated deliberate solar and lunar alignments. The orientations of the passages (entrances) exhibit a slightly broader distribution. This is centred about due south, but is doublé peaked, with a peak on either side os South. One might postúlate an alignment to the culminating moon low in the southern sky at times around the major standstill. Alternatively the data could be interpreted as relating to the rising and setting of a group of stars, notably Alpha Centauri and perhaps the Southern Cross.

Proceedings of th 9th anual meeting of the European Society for Astronomy in Culture (SEAC), Stockholm, 27-30 August 2001. Editors of volumen: Mary Blomberg, Peter E. Blomberg, Goran Henriksson. 167 pages

Peer reviewed