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date: 28 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

The causewayed enclosures of the second half of the fifth millennium BC and the fourth millennium BC are characterized by a system of ditches, one or more palisades, and occasionally, banks. Their ditches and palisade trenches were frequently re-cut and produce materials which for the most part were specially selected, including human skeletons or body parts, animals, pottery, axes, other debris, and signs of fires. These deposits had often been transformed by skeletonization, weathering, breakage and/or fire. In some areas there was a clear association between activities at the causewayed enclosures and those at megalithic tombs.

Keywords: Causewayed enclosures, ditches, palisade, re-cutting, transformation, megalithic

Niels H. Andersen

Niels H. Andersen is Senior Curator/Deputy Director at Moesgaard Museum, Denmark and professor adjunct at University of Copenhagen. After completing his MA on the Funnel Beaker culture he was appointed to Moesgaard Museum, with responsibility for rescue excavations in the Aarhus area. Since 1997 he has been its Deputy Director. As a student he began excavations at the Sarup causewayed enclosure. These excavations ceased in 1984, but work continued at Neolithic settlements and megalithic tombs in the area. In 1997 he completed his doctoral thesis on the Sarup enclosures and has published four books about these important sites. In 1996 he received the Erik Westerby Memorial Grant and in 2010 he became Knight of the Order of Dannebrog.

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