The Haga dolmen ( sv, Hagadösen) is a

megalith A megalith is a large stone that has been used to construct a prehistoric structure or monument, either alone or together with other stones. There are over 35,000 in Europe alone, located widely from Sweden to the Mediterranean sea. The ...

dolmen A dolmen () or portal tomb is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of two or more upright megaliths supporting a large flat horizontal capstone or "table". Most date from the early Neolithic (40003000 BCE) and were somet ...

, dating from the

Neolithic The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several parts ...

era. It is located on the island of

Orust Orust () is an island in western Sweden, and Sweden's third largest island. In 2014 Statistics Sweden declared it to instead be the fourth largest island, under a definition which adds artificial canals to the possible bodies of water surrounding ...

Bohuslän Bohuslän (; da, Bohuslen; no, Båhuslen) is a Swedish province in Götaland, on the northernmost part of the country's west coast. It is bordered by Dalsland to the northeast, Västergötland to the southeast, the Skagerrak arm of the North Sea ...

Västra Götaland County Västra Götaland County ( sv, Västra Götalands län) is a county or '' län'' on the western coast of Sweden. The county is the second most populous of Sweden's counties and it comprises 49 municipalities (''kommuner''). Its population of 1 ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

. Hagadösen is registered by the

Swedish National Heritage Board The Swedish National Heritage Board ( sv, Riksantikvarieämbetet; RAÄ) is a Swedish government agency responsible for World Heritage Sites and other national heritage monuments and historical environments. It is governed by the Ministry of Cult ...

History

The grave site consists of four raised stone slabs, with a fifth slab placed as a roof, with an additional

threshold stone A threshold stone or sill stone (german: Schwellenstein) is a rectangularly dressed stone slab that forms part of the entrance of megalithic tombs of the Funnelbeaker culture, normally those with a passage. The red sandstone slab, up to 0.1 metres ...

by the entry and a stepping stone. It is surrounded by a small mound of earth, and some barely visible edge stones. While small in size, the dolmen has the province's largest inside chamber. It has a rough dating of about 3400 BCE. Several artifacts were found during an

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landscap ...

excavation in 1915 by Vilhelm Ferdinand Ekman (1823-1900). Among artifact were an

amber Amber is fossilized tree resin that has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Much valued from antiquity to the present as a gemstone, amber is made into a variety of decorative objects."Amber" (2004). In Ma ...

necklace, a stone axe, a

flint Flint, occasionally flintstone, is a sedimentary cryptocrystalline form of the mineral quartz, categorized as the variety of chert that occurs in chalk or marly limestone. Flint was widely used historically to make stone tools and start fir ...

knife, and some

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

jewellery. These finds were dated to the late Neolithic. No grave finds from the dolmen's primary period, the early Neolithic, have been discovered. The neighbouring dolmen was also excavated at this time.

References

Other sources

External links

Bohusläns museum website
{{coord, 58.1406, N, 11.6119, E, source:wikidata, display=title Archaeological sites in Sweden Dolmens History of Bohuslän Nordic Stone Age