Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

Yes positive inasmuch that the samples taken were clean.

Firstly, thanks Sanctuary for starting a thought provoking thread that prompted me to turn my lap-top back on ... quite late, so apologies in advance for any incoherence.

Rodney Castleden in his excellent book Britain 3000BC makes many references to Orkney as the one the few places where the neolithic way of life in Britain can be observed in a tangible way. In his chapter 'The Castles of Eternity' he says the following.

Two big Orkney tombs, Quoyness and Quanterness, were built to the same plan and in the same materials as an Orcadian stone house. One of the houses at Barnhouse is identical in layout to the tombs: a rectangular room with an entrance passage leading into the middle of one of the long sides and six symmetrically arranged rectangular bed recesses. Here, the architectural metaphor is taken a significant step further – in Orkney people were not just making houses for the dead, but beds for them too. The Orcadians passed from home to tomb, from bed to cist, from sleep to death. Even in the simple cist burials, no more than stone boxes made out of four slabs planted in the ground, were references to the stone box-beds that were standard furniture in Orkney houses at Barnhouse and Skara Brae.

He goes on to say …
There has been a recent tendency to draw attention to the differences between the architecture of long barrows and that of long houses …

A search for a suspected Neolithic village on the island of Westray led to the discovery of a major chambered tomb. This consist of a mound 21m across covering a large (7 x 4.5m) burial chamber, the largest ever found in Britain dating from 3000BC. The chamber is near rectangular, with bowed sides and rounded corners, very like the well known Neolithic houses at Knap of Howar, not far away on Papa Westray. The huge burial chamber was meant to look just like a house. Human fingers and toes found close by suggest a sky-burial site next to the tomb. A family lived in a house; the same family lived on in the family tomb.

I've left a bit out of that last section which also talks about Paul Ashbee's idealized reconstruction of Fussell's Lodge long barrow as a solid long barrow with a pitched roof - the author then goes on to use the Westray barrow to support the idea.

The fact that the WKLB for instance was 'open for business' for something like a 1,000 years before being filled in MAY confirm that they were only intended for the special ones and not Joe Bloggs who would have filled it pretty quickly.

There was secondary activity at WKLB around 2400 BC at the latest but it is now considered that that the primary deposits were 3670-3635 cal bc and the last internments 3640-3610 cal bc with a suggestion that primary mortuary activity lasted only 10-30 years ,the chamber was then infilled within a century .

Yes and 46 disarticulated skellies is not much to show for it is it after all that time is it unless they were 'special' in one way or another! Whether that truly represented the total amount of internments or whether much was removed (other than the odd lngbone or skull) I don't suppose we'll ever know. The date of 2400BC is when it is believed Silbury 1 was started and in my opinion when beliefs changed as the newcommers arrived and Silbury rose up and 'challenged' the beliefs that the WKLB held! The Swallowhead Springs of course lay between the two and had, in my opinion again, a huge part to play in this!

Effectively the start of the Early Bronze Age , West Kennet Avenue also dates from the same period (2400/2500bc ) introduction of metals , beaker burials , sarsens at Stonehenge , bit like the late 60's really .

Yes and likely the Beckhampton Avenue as well and the stones to the Great Circle. They would seem unlikely not to. The Sanctuary timber rings supposedly preceded them but the stones again were probably contemporary with the other stone phases other than the WKLB of course which is from an earlier time. I've always thought that a timber 'complex' was not out of the question as a precursor to the 'real deal' in stone either but don't have much evidence for that I have to admit, but whatever they were trying to achieve could have been completed much sooner in timber!

As Devil's Advocate, I'd say the resemblances could be, maybe not coincidental, exactly, but possibly the result of what might be called "habit of mind"?

As in, "This is the way 'houses' are built." For the living people, the dead ancestors, the animals, the tools, whatever.