Burial Customs and the Dolmen Problem

Abstract

By summarizing briefly the existing facts and problems relating to the dolmens in Palestine and Transjordan, an attempt was made in this paper to establish the date and purpose of this important and imposing group of ancient monuments. The very nature of the existing archaeological evidence still necessitates certain hypotheses. We concluded that the free-standing dolmens fulfilled some function in secondary burial rites—presumably serving, wholly or partly, as primary burial places—in the Chalcolithic and Proto-Urban Periods, that is, in the second half of the fourth millennium. This conclusion is based upon some datable pottery finds and is supported by the evidence of burial rites in those periods. It is also strengthened by the virtually negative results of any serious attempt to attribute them to any other, earlier or later, period.The dolmens were erected, in our opinion, mainly by nomadic or semi-nomadic pastoral people. Their zone of distribution, the evidence of secondary burial rites that are usually practised by such people, the population represented by the pottery finds in the dolmens and many parallels as to the economy of megalithic tomb builders in other areas, all point to this conclusion.Our conclusions, however, are not based upon sufficient data and the dolmen problem in our region undoubtedly requires further systematic research and excavations. We hope that in future investigations, our working hypotheses presented in this paper may be of some help, as they do· not appear as yet fundamentally wrong, although this possibility should never be forgotten.