The hills overlooking the north flank of the Rhine valley in the
Netherlands are dotted with hundreds of prehistoric burial mounds.
Only a few of them were ever investigated by archaeologists and
even nowadays the many barrows preserved in the extensive forests
of the Utrechtse Heuvelrug are the oldest visible witnesses of a
remote but largely unknown prehistoric past. In 2006, a team of
archaeologists of the Ancestral Mounds project of Leiden University
set out to investigate these age-old monuments. Parts of two mounds
at Elst in the municipality of Rhenen were excavated and numerous
finds collected by amateur archaeologists were retrieved and
studied. As a result, the research team was able to reconstruct the
formation and histories of this barrow landscape from 2000 BC
onwards. Contrary to what was initially thought, the Elst barrows
appeared not to have been situated within a separate ceremonial
landscape but were rather closely linked with the world of daily
living. Throughout the Bronze Age and Iron Age, people had been
"living near the dead." The finds discussed in this book include a
rare example of an Early Bronze Age burial mound, examples of
pottery deposition, remains of a Middle Bronze Age
"Hilversum-Period" settlement and many indications for mundane and
ritual uses of the barrows in the later Iron Age. Dr David Fontijn
is associate professor in European prehistory at Leiden University
and senior research fellow at the TOPOI excellence cluster in
Berlin. His research focuses on the Bronze and Iron Age and was
awarded several prizes including the Praemium Erasmianum study
Prize for his book Sacrificial landscapes .
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