Scholarly record

STONE PILES AND SIGNS ON STONE SURFACES IN NORTHERN ESTONIA

V. Seglins, Ag. Kukela, B. Lazdina

Abstract

There are many remnants of ancient stone buildings remaining in Estonia, however most well-known monuments are related to the Bronze Age or later periods. Similarly, the sites identified so far as ancient places of worship are the places and areas mentioned in different beliefs and associated with different cults forgotten in the recent past. At the same time, there are a number of unusual rock piles in the landscape of Northern Estonia that have been excluded from agricultural land development already in ancient times and are not related to traditional land reclamation structures, stone removal from the fields or clearance cairn. The aim of this study was to ascertain the existence of such stone piles and to assess the extent to which they have been processed by humans, excluding the frequent cases where such rock piles are of natural origin. For this purpose, the area around Lake Kahala was studied, especially along the ancient shoreline of the lake, with the aim of identifying possible distribution area of the stone-cist graves. Another goal of this study was to identify the diversity of artificially formed micro-relief shapes of stone-cist graves and to establish their characteristic features in nature. These observations allowed applying the accumulated experience to recognize similar forms and formations at another study object in the vicinity of Tuhala Witch Well, performing photographic documentation, on site observations and obtained data verification for further processing. A significant number of artificially formed micro-relief shapes were identified there, as well as numerous stones purposefully treated in the antiquity, on the exposed surfaces of which a significant number of fragments of ancient signs and symbols have been preserved.

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