• Questions about questions
• Stone cists and stone burial chambers
• Megalithic complexes – a mostly European phenomenon
• When the significance of a find is unclear
   

Questions about questions

The circumstances surrounding the finding of the stone slab at Gratsch/Meran raise a number of questions. The stone slab was found in 1957 during building work. According to its discoverers, it, together with a similar stone slab, came from a grave dating from the Late Antiquity period. Since no archaeologists were present when the slab was dug up, a number of questions arise. Are the statements made by the discoverers of the slab correct? Is it possible that the two slabs were merely reused in Late Antiquity? Could they have come originally from two Neolithic stone tombs? Does the surface of the stone show tool traces that could be used to date the slabs? Could these possible traces have been produced using metal tools? If so, is it possible that the slabs came from the end of the Neolithic period but were not worked with metal tools until some time in Late Antiquity when they were reused? Questions about questions to which there are as yet no definite answers.
  

Stone cists and stone burial chambers

During the middle Neolithic after the middle of the 5th millennium BC people in large parts of Europe buried their dead in stone cists. In these the dead are placed in the foetal or sleeping, position. They are, without exception, individual tombs.
Towards the end of the Neolithic there was a shift to large stone burial chambers. Some of these were more than 20 metres long and several metres wide. Originally they were placed under a mound of earth. They were communal burial sites that were used in some cases for hundreds of years. A characteristic feature is the presence of a stone slab at one end of the tomb in which a round hole has been made. These holes are too small to serve as an entrance. Presumably they served as a connection between the living and the dead during sacrificial acts. Archaeologists therefore sometimes refer to them as “soul holes”, though there is no concrete evidence that they were in fact intended to serve as a “door” for the souls of the dead.
  

Megalithic complexes – a mostly European phenomenon

Megalithic complexes first appeared in large parts of what is now Western Europe over the course of the Neolithic. Along with stone burial chambers there are standing stones, stone rows, stone circles, and extensive rock-cut tombs. Famous examples include the stone circles of Stonehenge in Salisbury, England, the very extensive stone rows of the Carnac stones in Brittany, France, and the “Domus de Janas” rock-cut tombs in Sardinia. In the southern Alpine valleys there are many man-like standing stones known as menhirs. 
  

The work of the archaeologist – when the significance of a find is unclear

As in the case of the stone slab found at Gratsch,  the significance of archaeological objects is not always apparent. This is the case, for instance, when a hiker unaccompanied by an archaeologist comes across an object lying on the ground. The finding of objects under such circumstances provides little information on the site of the find. For example, it does not answer the question of whether the site was once a settlement or a burial ground. The significance of the find thus remains unclear. In order to determine the age of a find, archaeologists perform comparative studies. In these, finds are compared with corresponding objects from other, better documented, sites in terms of their typology, i.e. their design and shape. In this way the chronological period, cultural affiliation, and purpose of an object can be determined.