The Neolithic tombs of Northwestern
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
, particularly
Ireland
Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...
, were built by the
Neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...
(New Stone Age) people in the period 4000 - 2000 BC. There are four main types:
*
Passage grave
A passage grave or passage tomb consists of one or more burial chambers covered in earth or with stone, and having a narrow access passage made of large stones. These structures usually date from the Neolithic Age, and are found largely in Wester ...
s
*
Court cairn
The court cairn or court tomb is a megalithic type of chambered cairn or gallery grave. During the period, 3900–3500 BCE, more than 390 court cairns were built in Ireland and over 100 in southwest Scotland. The Neolithic (New Stone ...
s
*
Standing Stones
All these types of
tomb
A tomb ( grc-gre, τύμβος ''tumbos'') is a repository for the remains of the dead. It is generally any structurally enclosed interment space or burial chamber, of varying sizes. Placing a corpse into a tomb can be called ''immureme ...
were built from large slabs of
rock
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* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
which were uncut or worked only slightly. In each case, there was a "doorway" made from two large stones facing each other.
The doorway led to an inner chamber, or a passage and chamber, lined with flat slabs. In all but the portal dolmens, the tomb was then covered in earth and small stones to make a mound.
While some of these stone structures did indeed have human remains contained within them, it is erroneous to suggest that they all were "tombs". It is peculiar to note that after being in use for 3–4,000 years many of these contained no bones whatsoever. Some remains that were carbon dated showed that the interments were inserted hundreds of years after the megaliths were constructed. It would seem that when the original purpose of the "passage tombs" was abandoned, they were adapted for use as crypts by later generations.
Burial monuments and structures
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