Sarup. Causewayed enclosures placed in a Neolithic ritual landscape on Funen, Denmark

Abstract

Two causewayed enclosures were uncovered at Sarup, one, known as Sarup I, nearly 9 ha in area and representing the Fuchsberg phase of the Funnel Beaker Culture, i.e. 3400 BC, and the other – Sarup II – only 3.5 ha in area and from the Klintebakke phase, i.e. 3250 BC. Intensive surveys of the fields within 12 km2 around the Sarup site in recent years have yielded a lot of material from the same periods of the Neolithic, e.g. more than 30 settlements and 130 megalithic tombs. Only parts of skeletons were recovered in both the graves and enclosures. Often the graves were placed in clusters, which may divide the area into equal-sized units. This may imply a segmentation of the land area, just as with the segmentation of the ditches around the enclosures.