During the Neolithic, the coastal countries of Western Europe had a tradition of collective burial of the dead. Many tombs started as simple cairns (mounds of stones) or barrows (mounds of earth or chalk) but were re-used and remodelled over the centuries. In the north and west of Britain stone-built burial vaults could be entered whenever desired. In the south and east, where stone was lacking, long barrows were constructed over sealed wooden or turf burial chambers.
Over three hundred earthen long barrows are known, mainly in the chalk hills of eastern and southern England. Where the terrain allows there is tendency for the barrows to lie roughly east to west, possibly aligned with the rising of the Moon.
Sometimes large stones were used to form burial chambers, a construction associated with the megalithic ‘culture’, so-named because of the great stone tombs (vaults) and circles that distinguish it, which extends from Malta and Sardinia to the Iberian Peninsula, Brittany, Britain and Denmark.
The chambered tombs of Britain can be divided into two groups (a) gallery, which has a long chamber divided into small compartments, or (b) passage, which has a longish passage opening into a chamber at the end.
Passage tombs appear in the first half of the fourth millennium BC in areas bounding the Irish Sea. In Ireland, cemetery areas are especially numerous around the Boyne Valley. They are also found in Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands, Iberia, and along the northern coast of Africa.
The passage tombs of Knowth (c.3200 BC), Newgrange (c.3200 BC) and Dowth (c.2500 BC) lie within three kilometres of each other and dominate the bend of the Boyne River. Knowth has two passages entered from opposite sides of the mound. Unfortunately both passages were disrupted during years of human activity, but they were probably aligned with the sunrise and sunset at the summer solstice.
Newgrange has above its passage entrance an opening called the ‘roof box’ through which at the midwinter solstice the rising Sun shines along the passage and illuminates the burial chamber at the far end. Maeshowe (c.3200 BC), the passage tomb in Orkney, has a similar arrangement. Henges make their first appearance c.3000 BC. The name ‘henge’ is derived from Stonehenge, famous for its summer solstice alignment. The classic henge has a circular ditch with an external bank having one entrance or two opposing entrances. Stonehenge is an atypical henge in that its ditch being outside the earthwork bank implies that it was not defensive but served rather to enclose a private (sacred) place. Over three hundred henges have been identified. Several henge sites have been shown to orientate towards solstice points.
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