I’m doing a little bit of research on ancient tombs, In particular, Passage tombs(in barrows) .I understand the concept, Put up a bunch of big stones so they form a passageway, cover them with earth and bury people in them. Done by bronze/stone age peoples.
My question is, are the people in such tombs just laid there or does somebody dig a pit withen them and bury them in a shallow grave like the west is used to(not nassesary the shallow part)?
Or to put it more clearly, If I was digging in my yard and discovered a passage tomb just under the surface, when I entered, would I have to crawl over bones and arifacts to explore it(assume it hadn’t been robbed), or would the bodies be buried under a shallow layer of dirt in the floor? Or would the whole thing be full of anyway so I’d have to dig it out to see how far it goes(seems contirdicatry, but the diagrams haven’t been particualry detail oriented)?
The stuff I’ve looked at hasn’t made clear which to expect.
Longer answer - How was the body originally interred? All manner of burial have been conducted. I want to say that in burial mounds, depending on the location, you can see burial, above ground coffin (AKA sarcophagus), the body on a bed or wagon or some sort of litter to the bodies arranged on the ground. I say bodies because there are often more than a single burial in a large mound.
What has happened to the tomb over the years? It is possible that trees have grown and that rodents and other animals have taken a look. That means that the the bones you trip over on the surface were moved.
Odd are that anything would be under at least a little dirt, whether buried or just accumlation over time. If you should ever come across tomb in your yard, please don’t play Indiana Jone, and call your friendly neighborhood archaeologist. Or me.
It would depend on where in the world you would be at, but since most of them are in the European area. I mostly know about the Irish passage tombs, and even there I don’t remember much about the burials, and the books I’ve read never really said. I do know that at places like Newgrange the bodies were cremated, and I believe that this is the norm.
I’m trying to remember what else I have learned, but from what I remember is that they would also leave the bodies out, or clean them off, then intern them. Later they would take them back out and cremate them and re-intern them. In other cases they would break the bones to get them to fit.
In passages tombs I do not remember ever reading about some one being buried. The problem with the tombs is that because they have been around so long the bodies, if there ever where any, were destroyed, or the tomb itself was taken down either to reuse the stones, or because of religious reasons.
Here are some links you might find helpful. You can also email me as I have a ton of books at home and I can get the names for you. I’ll not be back until Monday so the email will help remind me.
I think these are the best, though I admit I haven’t looked in a while. They also tend to have some ideas that I don’t agree with. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in a tomb before, but while they are big, the insides tend not to be very large.