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BuckyE wrote:
So even here the dead have their place, and the living theirs. There aren't many extant examples of Neolithic houses, but comparing the couple I've seen (Scara Brae, Cambous) to barrows (West Kennet, Isbister, Stony Littleton, multiple sites in Brittany, etc.) the actual construction doesn't really seem that similar. It's perhaps reminiscent, in the sense it may use similar techniques, but to me the barrows don't look like particularly nice houses.
Yes I'd have to agree that known "graves" aren't at all practical for everyday living...as commonplace observations and coming and goings are a tad restricted(I mentioned one in Carnac in another thread...apparently this was used as a hideout for rebels....again not the most practical place for if it had been discovered there was no easy escape route)...though I recall one grave excavation(can't recall where it was) on television,it was almost to all extents and purposes a "house" where even the table had been laid as for a meal and the body was arranged on the bed with the deceased's wordly goods on him or close by..the lack of widows and firehearth were the only indications that this this wasn't a habitation, just a facsimile for a dead warrior. I'm no archeo...and perhaps houses were at some point built without window openings and heating/cooking facilities...but does anyone really think so??

Spot the fallacy:

Long barrows = Enclosed, comparmentalised spaces.
Toolsheds = Enclosed, comparmentalised spaces.
Ergo, Long barrows were replica toolsheds.

Resonox wrote:
Yes I'd have to agree that known "graves" aren't at all practical for everyday living...as commonplace observations and coming and goings are a tad restricted
Well to return to my original example and layout, the WKLB type of long barrow without the capstones would make an excellent house for the living, and the dead if it had been roofed in a more traditional way. It had what one could describe as a 'living area' and the side chambers for storage/sleeping/internment. Who's to say that the early burials were not of those that actually lived there initially or indeed later on. I would imagine that if you were still considered to be 'alive' it was no big scary thing to have dead bodies lying around in a side chamber.
Some years back now I was working at a very old thatched cottage in Hampshire where we were building a new kitchen onto the rear of the property. This meant removing the decrepid old outhouse that was already attached and where we discovered a brick lined grave beneath ground with the remains of a skellie in...headstone and all of a lady named Elizabeth. The digger driver who unearthed it fled from the scene and was never seen again!!
Burials in gardens adjacent to houses used to be very common so why not indoors as well.