The Alblasserwaard is one big history book. The mills of Kinderdijk are a reminder of the Alblasserwaard battle against the water. Farms offer a glimpse of the Middle Ages when the waard was developed. And the landscape hides prehistoric islands, called donken. The 'Alblasserwaarders' who lived in the new stone age had their home here.
Dalemse Donk
The donken were formed at the end of the last ice age, about ten thousand years ago. The landscape looked very different then: sometimes kilometers wide rivers flowed between enormous sandbanks. Wind and water created meters high river dunes. In the new stone age (Neolithic 5300 - 2000 BC) the dunes looked like islands in an immense swamp.
The Alblasserwaard counts at least seventy donks. And until recently, geologists and archaeologists thought that they had all been mapped. If Gorinchem had not had construction plans for the new Laag Dalem-Zuid district, the recently discovered Dalemse Donk would never have been found. During test drilling commissioned by the municipality in the area between the Waaldijk and the Van Andel-Spruytlaan, archaeological consultancy firm Raap came across traces completely unexpectedly.
Big surprise
""We had absolutely not taken into account the fact that there might be a donk here," says Marten Verbruggen. He has been working on the Alblasserwaard donks for years. For example, he was involved in the excavation of Trijntje on behalf of Leiden University. This prehistoric woman was found in 1997 in Hardinxveld-Giessendam during archaeological excavations at the site of the Betuwelijn. Her skeleton is the oldest ever found in the Netherlands. That this location would reveal signs of 'Stone Age life' was not surprising in itself. Because Trijntje was lying in the middle of a donk, where it has been known since the XNUMXs that people lived in the Neolithic." According to Verbruggen, archaeologists largely owe this knowledge to Huib de Kok, the amateur archaeologist from Hardinxveld-Giessendam. “Until his retirement, De Kok was a cattle feed dealer and therefore visited many Alblasserwaard farmers. During one of those visits, he came across a flint axe, found on one of the mounds. He brought the object to the attention of experts, who still assumed that prehistoric man only moved through the marshes. If something was found, they thought it was just a coincidence. Such a hunter had simply lost something.”
Impression of life on a prehistoric mound by Kelvin Wilson.
In the end, it was not difficult to prove that donks were inhabited in prehistoric times. Lekkerkerker T. Vink had already started mapping the islands in the 1920s. He got on his bike and rode through the Alblasserwaard in search of traces in the landscape. “A donk betrayed itself, especially in the winter. The seepage water that seeps out of that donk has a higher temperature and therefore freezes less easily. Birds gather around those places. Vink only had to keep his eyes open. But birds were not his only source of information. He went to the Alblasserwaard cafés where he chatted with the farmers. In this way, he also discovered a number of donks,” says Verbruggen. There are dozens of them, especially north of Gorinchem – near Hoornaar and Hoogblokland. But none can be found in the immediate vicinity of the Arkelstad. “The Dalemse Donk is completely flat and therefore does not stand out. Vink probably never ended up in Gorinchem during his search for islands in the landscape. And the donk was never built on, which meant that traces from the Stone Age remained covered. That at least partly explains why no one knew of its existence anymore.”
Donk intensively used as a residential area
Verbruggen, who started out as a geologist himself, also saw no signs that betrayed the existence of the Dalemse Donk. The samples from soil drillings at a depth of five metres revealed the secret. The latest discovery in the field of donks is located between the Merwededijk and the Van Andel-Spruytlaan at the Groote Wiel on the Lingsesdijk. “The newly discovered donk is a top attraction for archaeologists. Not only because the discovery was completely unexpected, but also because of the many soil finds. I have never before found so many remains of pottery and flint in samples as here. This means that the donk was used intensively as a residential area. We know that the people of Alblasserwaard from the Neolithic period moved from island to island. But whether they did this, for example, at the changing of the seasons, or every few generations, is not clear.”
Thumb scrapers, flint
Verbruggen's enthusiasm is partly caused by archaeological grit, small pieces of stone and bone carefully stored in a plastic bag. At first glance, there are minuscule stones in it, but after a second look and some explanation from the expert, the eye sees a fragment of the spine of a fish. It looks like a diabolo. And there are more: each one in a slightly different color, from brown to white to blue-white. "That nuance tells me something about the heat of the fire. Because that fish was caught and eaten and definitely did not die a natural death. Otherwise, those fragments would look different."
If the surface area of the Dalemse Donk reveals so much, the question of what else it hides is inevitable. “People have lived, eaten, slept, hunted and died there. It is quite possible that there are graves, like Trijntje's. In fact, there could be family members of hers. At least, I assume that the residents of that time in their wooden dugout canoes can best compare the distance Hardinxveld-Giessendam - Gorinchem with the Biesbosch. That is roughly what it must have looked like. Perhaps Trijntje herself lived here. If you really want to know, you would of course first have to discover a grave and then use DNA research to determine whether there is a family connection.”
Preservation in original state
As interesting as that may be, Verbruggen is strangely not eager to dig in the Dalem donk. He attaches more value to preserving the donk in its original state than to emptying it. “We know that we can find a lot here. But there is no reason to disturb the soil. The municipality of Gorinchem spares the donk in its construction plans and thus guarantees its preservation. Sometimes that is not possible and then we would like to do research first before everything disappears. With the Betuwelijn, disturbance of that donk was inevitable. And so we seized the opportunity for research with both hands. It has taught us a lot. But we have also become wiser from the Dalemse Donk. The donks were in groups. It seems as if the new one is a single donk. But when we continue the lines and sketch what the landscape must have been like at the time, we can determine that it belongs to a group on the other side of the river. In the land of Heusden and Altena there are also a few, which must have once been a group together. The Merwede has separated them.”
Visually back in the landscape
Gorinchem initially planned to build on the entire area between the Van Andel-Spruytlaan and the Merwededijk. The discovery of the donk has changed the building plans. The area at the Groote Wiel will only be partially built on. At the top of the Dalemse Donk, Gorinchem is creating a park that should visually bring the island back into the landscape. There will be only a few houses to the north and south of this landscape park. Two new neighbourhoods will be built towards Dalem, inspired by the shape of the donk. The Alblasserwaarders of the new era – as archaeologists characterise the years after 1700 – will move to their Merwedonk and Woelse Donk, as the neighbourhoods will be called, in the course of 2004.
AD Rivierenland
Anja Broeken
09-04-2003