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Houses for the dead...what about the living?
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BuckyE
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Re: Houses for the dead...what about the living?
Sep 09, 2010, 03:19
Sanctuary wrote:
... a Chieftain that had died about 20 years previously and was propped up in a makeshift chair on this shelf of stone outside...


Not having seen the show, I don't know exactly what this means. But it doesn't sound like the sadly disarticulated ancestors were living in the house, right? So, even in this intimate situation, the ancestors had their own place, so to speak! Kind of a mother-in-law apartment type of arrangement?

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.
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