Excavations of Late Neolithic arable, burial mounds and a number of well-preserved skeletons at Oostwoud-Tuithoorn : a re-analysis of old data

In 1956 and 1957 prof. A.E. van Giffen, the nestor of Dutch Archaeology, excavated two burial mounds near Oostwoud, on a parcel named ‘Tuithoorn’ in de province of Noord-Holland. These mounds appeared to have been erected in the Late Neolithic between 2500 and 1900 cal BC. They contained at least 12 well preserved skeletons dating to the Late Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age. Until today these are the only burial mounds from that period in West-Frisia, moreover, they contained the only skeletons from that period in the area. Yet, apart from a few brief overviews the data have not been published. The present article is an attempt to re-analyse the data of the investigations by Van Giffen, but also of later research by M. de Weerd in 1963 and 1966, and by J.D. Van der Waals in 1977 and J.N. Lanting in 1978 in the same mounds. In the framework of the NWO-project Farmers of the Coast, the first author undertook the task to collect the dispersed data and to try to unravel the sequences of burial. Aided by the Leiden University Bakels fund, and a fund of the Province of Noord-Halland, we also had the opportunity to sample the bones for DNA and isotopes, and to study the pathology of the skeletons. Some of the analyses are not yet finished, but here we publish the excavation data using the original field drawings and day notes, and much of the original photography. We have done this in some detail because the site is one of the most important in its kind in the Netherlands and because it will play an important role in the discussion about Bell Beaker mobility and genetics in the near future. We used already some of the skeletal and DNA data in this article, but more detailed studies are following.