The Seven Mounds (De Zeven bergjes)

Burial mounds from the Stone Age

Hilversum - The Seven Mounds is a group of 10 burial mounds From the Stone Age on the moors between Hilversum and Laren. These mounds (don't expect anything higher than 1 meter) are about 4000 years old, dating from the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. Under and around the burial mounds, urns, a dagger, an ax and a jar have been found.

More than 1700 prehistoric burial mounds

The hills near Hilversum were used as a cemetery in prehistoric times and were used several times and adapted to the times. Burial mounds are also called tumuli, after the Roman word Tumulus. There are still about 1700 prehistoric burial mounds scattered across the Netherlands. But most of them are so small that they are barely noticeable.
The burial mounds near Hilversum were restored in the 20th century. On the heath, the hills are easy to recognize.

Prehistoric comb fields

In 2012, an amateur archaeologist discovered a number of striking structures on the Hoorneboegse heide, elsewhere in Hilversum, based on a height relief on a map of the Current Heights File of the Netherlands (AHN). Upon further investigation, it turned out to be so-called honeycomb fields or Celtic fields. Dutch farmers from the Iron Age divided the land into small square fields surrounded by low walls. These ancient fields can still be seen as a kind of checkerboard pattern on aerial photographs. Some potsherds have shown that this area was already inhabited in the Iron Age.