MEGALITHS > HUNEBED MAP

A Hunebed Map of Drenthe

CLICK ON THE NUMBERS on the map for details, photos and location maps for each hunebed.

Drenthe Hunebed Map
Interactive Map of the
Hunebedden of Drenthe

In the 1920s, the pioneering Dutch archaeologist A. E. van Giffen established a system that designated each one by a letter for its province ('D' for Drenthe) and a number to identify it. That system has remained the standard.

In Drenthe, the numbers D1 through D54 run roughly from north to south. On the map, the municipalities of Drenthe are shown in white. Although it received a number, the ruined hunebed D33 (Valtherveld) has completely disappeared after its stones were 'looted' - by van Giffen himself - in 1955 for the restoration of hunebed D49 in Schoonord. D48 (Emmen-Noordbarge) refers to a single stone that was originally thought to be a capstone of a hunebed lying underneath. It was hastily assigned a number, but nothing further was ever found. Sometimes a stone is just a stone.

Hunebedden are concentrated in the northern Netherlands, and almost exclusively in Drenthe, but there are a few others in Groningen (G1 is in sight of the Drenthe border in Noordlaren; G5, originally found at Heveskesklooster, is reconstructed in a museum in Delfzijl); others consist only of scattered traces. Placeholder stones mark the remains of the only one known in Friesland (F1, in the Rijsterbos), and the remnants of O1 (near de Eees) and O2 (at Mander) are in Overijssel.

Excerpts of the monument descriptions and an edition of this map have been published in Blake Evans-Pritchard and Violetta Polese's guidebook to the Netherlands - The Hague and the Best of the Netherlands (City Trail Publishing, Wales; 2013). The book, for which I served as an archeological consultant, is also available from Amazon in paperback and as a Kindle edition.