Sanctuary - Tumulus

This is the sanctuary of Barger-Oosterveld. The original was built in the Bronze age and was excavated from peat. We can offer sacrifices to the gods or ancestors in this sanctuary during a crisis, famine, or in times of war for example. We can offer anything such as axes, arrowheads or jewelry. We can even sacrifice people. These people are often put to death by strangulation or stabbing.Those people can be preserved for thousands of years, so they will be found in very good conditions. intact with hair, teeth and even the stomach contents.

Next to the sanctuary you’ll see a Tumulus, which is a burial mound. When we bury someone at the beginning of the Bronze Age, we lay that person on the ground and we build a hill of sods on top of the body. A sod is the upper layer of soil, held together by the roots of plants, mostly grass. We pile up the sods to build the hill. The first person we bury will be in the centre of the hill. The following bodies will be buried around the centre. So you can also have family burial mound. At the end of the Bronze Age we’ll become a bit more efficient as we will build the burial mound before someone has died. This way we don’t have to do everything at the last minute. To mark the tumulus even more we make a ditch or a row of poles around the hill.