Decaying flesh and instability of substances: rethinking Neolithic chambered tombs

Professor Colin Richards, Orkney College UHI

The problem of Neolithic chambered tombs

Of all Neolithic monuments, with perhaps the exception of Stonehenge, and some of the bigger stone circles, megalithic chambered tombs are surely some of the most impressive. In Britain and Ireland many of the earlier examples, such as the Cotswold-Severn, Clyde and Court cairns, assume the appearance of long mounds often of substantial proportions. Interpreting these monuments has not been quite as easy as may be expected. For instance, why are many of the mounds so substantial (Fig. 1), and although being called tombs why there are so few burials within the chambers, and why do the skeletal remains appear to comprise both articulated and disarticulated burials? Where disarticulation is present, why are the human remains frequently in such ‘chaotic order’ (Daniel 1963, 5)? In pondering such questions, many years ago Stuart Piggott wrote that ‘in discussions involving interpretations of the various features of chambered tombs there has perhaps been insufficient recognition that these structures present problems of peculiar complexity’ (1973, 9).

Since Piggott pondered the problematic nature of chambered tombs, archaeological knowledge has moved along both in terms of osteoarchaeological analysis and chronology. However, just how different are our interpretations of chambered tombs from those proposed fifty years ago by Piggott and his contemporaries? In particular, how should we account for the frequently mixed skeletal material and its chaotic appearance or, given the estimated numbers of interments, why such a small proportion of the population were being deposited in the megalithic chambers?

Figure 1. The Knowe of Lairo long cairn, Rousay, Orkney (Colin Richards).

Leaving aside the ‘human sacrifice-chieftain theory’ for the use of ‘chambered tombs’, Glyn Daniel (1950, 109-10) outlined two opposing views of the nature of burial within the chambers. First was the ossuary theory which had a long history, for example, it was offered in 1863 by Hilderbrand to account for the chaotic order of skeletal material uncovered in two Västergötland passage tombs in Sweden (Ahlström 2003, 255). This interpretation was proposed in response to the extent of disarticulation noted within many excavated chambers. Essentially, the corpse had rested elsewhere and only when the flesh decomposed were the skeletal remains collected and redeposited within the chamber. The second view was that of collective burial where complete bodies were interred over a prolonged period, a process later described as ‘equal access’ communal burial by Colin Renfrew (1979).

Variation on these two ‘theories’ marked interpretative accounts of earlier Neolithic mortuary practices over the last 35 years (e.g. Shanks & Tilley 1982; Thorpe 1984; Thomas & Whittle 1986; Richards 1988; Thomas 1988; 1991; 2000; Fowler 2010). Distinction in modified form continues today in archaeological discourse, for example, contrast Keith Ray and Julian Thomas’ description of the chambered tombs as ‘bone repositories’ (2018, 134), with Vicki Cummings’ statement that ‘in most instances it seems that chambered tombs saw the deposition of fleshed bodies which decayed within the monument’ (2017, 105).

In assessing the various interpretations of chambered tombs, it is unsurprising to recognise the assumption that the chambered tomb was a form of monumental architecture raised to house or contain the dead (e.g. Darvill 2004, 140), and much of the previous debate has been merely centred on how this function was achieved. Indeed, how could chambered tombs not be tombs as they contain considerable amounts (in some cases) of human skeletal material in one form or another? Here little critical attention has been directed towards the nature of the monument, the treatment of materials in its composition and the function of the burials as a component part of that monumentality (see however, McFadyen & Whittle 2006; McFadyen 2007).

The Third Policeman and fluidity of substances

Written in the 1930s, and posthumously published in 1967, Flann O’Brien’s The third policeman is a humorous and fascinating novel. It describes a familiar but curious world that only achieves clarity in the final chapter. In Chapter 6, the protagonist encounters Sergeant Pluck who appears to spend much of his time concealing and locating bicycles within the parish. On being questioned as to why a policeman should take this course of action, the answer is to restrict the workings of the ‘Atomic Theory’. It transpires that the ‘Atomic Theory’ states that things in direct physical contact will leak and transfer atoms into one another and consequently enable a process of transmutation. Consequently, Sergeant Pluck is taking preventative measures by hiding bicycles to ensure that people who spend substantial time riding them do not become part bicycle and vice versa. Unfortunately, the postman who constantly rides around the parish delivering mail has become an astonishing seventy one percent bicycle! This is an extremely dangerous and undesirable situation as ‘the behaviour of a bicycle that has a high content of humanity – is very cunning and extremely remarkable’. The realisation by the protagonist of the instability of substances within the parish fills his head ‘with fears and miscellaneous apprehensions’.

In The third policeman, Flann O’Brien is evoking a world that suffers from a high degree of material instability, where even walking stone roads allows a mutual process of absorption between person and road. It is a clearly a fully relational world which requires precautions to achieve adequate separation between things to maintain and control their integrity. Accepting that hiding things is not an effective strategy how would we as archaeologists identify times in the past where similar fluid material conditions and ontological concerns existed? For example, the technology and materiality of boundaries, skins, membranes and interfaces may well be exaggerated to such a degree that they appear as a prevalent and highly visible aspect of material and bodily culture.

Back to the Neolithic

The early Neolithic period in Britain and Ireland is not only characterised by the introduction of domesticates and varying degrees of monumentality, but also by a distinctive range of material culture. Interestingly, two defining elements of early Neolithic material culture; pottery and axes, have unusual modifications to their surfaces, for instance, jadeite axes, that are some of the earliest Neolithic objects to be present in Britain, have extraordinarily highly polished surfaces. The subsequent ‘production’ of polished stone axes at particular places enables their exchange across the length and breadth of Britain and Ireland during the fourth millennium BC (Fig. 2). These are beautiful objects, and the polishing of their rough form and texture produces a skin-like outer surface that invites touch (Edmonds & Ferraby 2013). Equally, the earliest Neolithic pottery, the carinated bowl, is burnished and polished to give a smooth skin-like outer surface to the vessel (Herne 1988; Sheridan 2010; Thomas 2013, 361-3). Nor is an emphasis on skins and boundaries restricted to portable items, but can be recognised as a major characteristic in a broad range of monumental architecture (e.g. see Darvill & Thomas 2001; Varndell & Topping 2002; Cummings & Richards 2016; Richards 2013). Causewayed enclosures seem to be constructed from early in the Neolithic (see Whittle et al. 2011) comprising one or more circuits of concentric ditches and banks. This is a monumental form predicated on permeable and impermeable boundaries. The defining gap or causeway between ditch segments is curious as it attests to a sophisticated interplay of a bounded entity, with a permeable membrane of separation. The same characteristic can be recognised in the flanking ditches of earthen long barrows. Taken together, it can be argued that the Neolithic was a period where containment and separation through embellished forms of boundary and wrapping, and a preoccupation with the physical constitution of outer skins and membranes was of major utility. These examples, it is suggested, testify to an ontological concern with controlling transgression and militating against the leakage of substances and dangers of fluidity within the Neolithic world.

Figure 2. The Neolithic polished stone axe has a skin-like outer surface (Woody Musgrove)

Skins, fractured rocks and chambered tombs

Of course, it is not only manufactured items and objects which have skins. The living human body is wrapped and protected by skin, and the feel of skin can be as smooth and tactile as a polished stone axe! Indeed, a skin or membrane of one form or another is a feature of a living thing. However, other ‘inanimate’ materials such as stones and rocks also have skins (cortex, patina, etc) which serve to provide an encompassing outer surface.

Careful examination of the stones employed in the construction of chambered tombs in Britain, Ireland and N. W. Europe reveals a remarkably consistent architectural feature. In the majority of cases split stones are employed for both orthostats (upright stones) and capstones, and they are always positioned with the outer surface towards the outside (Figs. 3 & 4). In some cases, such as the Danish passage graves, there are numerous examples of the two halves of the split stone assuming juxtaposed or opposed positions in the burial chambers (Dehn et al. 1995). This gives the chamber (and monument) an external skin of sorts; an impervious outer surface preventing transgression. Conversely, the fractured or cleaved surface is always facing inwards presenting a potentially permeable inner surface to the chamber. This is not simply a case of the unavailability of appropriately shaped building material, since a broad range of shaped and sized stones littered the previously glaciated areas of N. W. Europe, as Midgely astutely commented ‘the practice of splitting boulders is not likely to reflect a lack of suitable shapes and sizes’ (2008, 163). Even if this were the case, the deployment of fractured-inner and cortex-outer rock surfaces to form the chambered tomb would be more variable; being positioned according to structural requirement. Why would this feature of building be present across N. W. Europe, an area which displays such a variety of megalithic architecture?

Figure 3. Stone burial chamber within Capel Garmon, Wales - note the split stone inner surfaces (Colin Richards).

Figure 4. Capstone with cleaved underside at Carrowmore, Sligo, Ireland (Colin Richards).

Burials

The debate concerning the role of chambered tombs being ossuaries for defleshed bones or sequential collective burial was predicated on the chaotic, mixed or ordered arrangement of disarticulated human skeletal remains discovered in their chambers. I now wish to briefly revisit this debate because as Piggott once remarked, ‘the precise circumstances of burial have an important bearing on the function of tombs’ (1973, 11). In Swedish passage graves ‘the great confusion of bones in the chambers’ (Tilley 1999, 29), has now been demonstrated to be a product of post-mortem processes and subsequent rearrangement with initial burial being complete fleshed bodies, probably in a sitting position adjacent to the chamber walls (Ahlström 2003). The burial of complete bodies in chambered tombs is now being confirmed in a British context through programmes of osteoarchaelogical analysis, for example at the Cotswold-Severn chambered tomb at Ascott-under-Wychwood (Whittle et al. 2006, 137-88). Even re-analysis of assemblages from old excavations such as Tinkinswood, S. Wales, have provided similar results (Jess Thompson pers comm.). Taken together we appear to have conformation of Tim Darvill’s suggestion that ‘the presence of whole corpses within chambered tombs is probably better attested than adherents to the ossuary theory would admit’ (2004, 147).

Consequently, it is now possible to interpret the frequently chaotic, jumbled skeletal remains within chambered tombs as being a product of post-mortem and post-depositional processes in conjunction with subsequent rearrangement, removal and decay (Fig. 5). In some ways this is nothing new (cf. Barber 1997; Becket & Robb 2006; Fowler 2010; Richards 1988; Sharples 1985; Thomas & Whittle 1986; Thomas 1988; 1991; 2000, etc), but judging from the re-analysis of the skeletal remains in the passage grave of Falbygdan, Sweden (Ahlström 2003, 262), the position of the corpse in a sitting position resting against the chamber wall, may be a more common occurrence than was previously recognised (see Whittle et al. 2006, 139; Daniel 1950, 104-5). The important point to note is that in many instances, such as West Kennet (Piggott 1958, 238), the fleshed body is deposited adjacent to the chamber wall in direct physical contact with the cleaved (permeable) inner surface of the stone uprights.

Figure 5. The 'chaotic' spread of human bones in the chamber at Quanterness, Mainland, Orkney (Colin Renfrew).

Absorption, animation and the construction of chambered tombs

Even though Chris Fowler suggested that ‘we could infer that bodies were believed to contain vital essences manifest in flesh and blood and other bodily substances as well as in bone’ (2010, 17), little attention has been given to the decaying human flesh apart from as an intermediate or liminal phase in the transformation of the corpse from a living fleshed person to dead skeletal remains. Indeed, as mentioned earlier it has tended to be the defleshed bones and their subsequent treatment that have dominated archaeological interpretation (e.g. Thomas 2000; Gosden 2004; Reilly 2003). However, it is the fleshed body that is recognisable as a living person, and the essences manifest in flesh are indeed vital. If the defleshing process within Neolithic chambered tombs constitutes the dissolution of the living person then we have to consider the transmutation of the decaying flesh and the accompanying dissipation of vital essences. Here different strands of observation and argument coalesce in an appreciation that the chambered tomb is a qualitatively different form of material entity.

The architecture of the chambered tomb is constituted in such a way as to provide a place for the dead; a ‘burial’ chamber with orthostats having a protective and containing outer skin and cleaved, permeable inner surface. Hence, the deposition of fleshed corpses inside the chamber and their subsequent decomposition allows a gradual transfer and exchange of substances to ensue (Fig. 6). As the burial chamber slowly absorbs the flesh of the dead the accompanying transference of vitality enables a process of ‘becoming’. Conversely, the corpse takes on the characteristics of stone in the hardening and whitening of the bones. Consequently, through the decaying process of the human body, a transmutation is effected and the chambered tomb really does become an animated ‘living’ ancestor - just as the corpse fuses with the monument.

Figure 6. The distribution of human skeletal material within West Kennet chambered tomb (after Piggott 1962).

In discussing West Kennet, Bayliss et al. note that ‘in our preferred interpretation, the barrow is seen as a unitary construction...... with a series of deposits of human remains made in the chambers following construction’ (2007a, 85). This is an interesting statement which appears to differentiate the deposition of burials from the construction of the monument. Following the argument presented above, this is a false distinction and also raises a general question of how we recognise the end of ‘construction’ and beginnings of ‘use’ in different forms of monument (see Evans 1988; Barrett 1994; McFadyen 2007; Richards 2013)..

Interestingly, radiocarbon dating programmes involving Bayesian modelling have narrowed the chronological parameters of deposition as revealed in the interment period in a number of Cotswold – Severn chambered tombs. For instance, the megalithic tomb at Waylands Smithy, Berkshire, probably received burial over a few decades (Whittle et al. 2007a), while the chronology of human burial is even shorter at Hazleton in being less than a hundred year, and probably covering ‘only two or three generations’ (Meadows et al. 2007, 61). Deposition of burials at Ascott-under-Wychwood also seems to be short-lived covering a period of ‘three to five generations’ (Bayliss et al. 2007b, 42). Most surprising is the extremely short period of burial at West Kennet, which appears to have occurred over a single generation; 1-50 years and probably less (Bayliss et al. 2007a, 94).

In reference to the Cotswold-Severn chambered tombs, Tim Darvill suggests that ‘in many senses long barrows were alive’ (2004, 172). Here he is speaking of the network of practices in which the chambered tomb was enmeshed; however, here we can draw the strands of argument together and enhance this characterisation. In doing so, the very notion of a chambered ‘tomb’ can be challenged. The building of a chambered tomb is not merely to create a container or ‘house’ for the dead but to monumentally materialize particular forbears and ancestors; allowing their presence to be self-evident in the grandeur and magnitude of the physical entity. Here, deploying split stones in a manner that allows outer containment and inner permeability facilitates the decay of corpses as a continuation of the construction process. As the dead decay and the flesh and blood are absorbed into the fabric of the monument, a two-way flow of substances is affected. The flesh of the dead becomes the very fabric of the monument and conversely the stone hardens the bones as they merge and transmute into a single living entity. Through the deposition and decay of the dead the monument is nourished in a constant process of animation and becoming – it is indeed alive (Fig. 7).

Figure 7. The ‘living’ chambered tomb at Belas Knap (Adam Stanford).

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