Hillforts & Barrows

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tiompan T
tiompan Sep 16, 2012 22:43:00
Replying to thesweetcheat

thesweetcheat wrote:
tiompan wrote:
thesweetcheat wrote:
I guess that wouldn't have always been apparent though. You might assume the presence of bodies in a barrow, even if there aren't any.
Not if you belonged to a culture that for millenia would recognise that many barrows and deposition sites did not have human remains in them .
Yeah, that's true. But it still might not be apparent whether a particular barrow had a body in it, even if you knew that some did and some didn't. Unless there's an obvious way of knowing?
The important thing might be the presence of the barrow not necessarily what's underneath .

T thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat Sep 16, 2012 22:48:38
Replying to tiompan

tiompan wrote:
The important thing might be the presence of the barrow not necessarily what's underneath .
Slightly off at a tangent, but any theories about why build a barrow other than for funereal reasons? A cham bered long barrow has lots of possible uses I suppose, a cairn might be a boundary marker (but still quite a lot of effort to go to).

But are there examples of earthen barrows (long or round) which are known to have never contained any remains, even cremation? I guess it would have to a very intact barrow, in soil that was not damaging to bone.