Houses of the Dead?: Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers

The chronological disjuncture, LBK longhouses have widely been considered to provide ancestral influence for both rectangular and trapezoidal long barrows and cairns, but with the discovery and excavation of more houses in recent times is it possible to observe evidence of more contemporary inspiration. What do the features found beneath long mounds tell us about this and to what extent do they represent domestic structures. Indeed, how can we distinguish between domestic houses or halls and those that may have been constructed for ritual purposes or ended up beneath mounds? Do so called 'mortuary enclosures' reflect ritual or domestic architecture and did side ditches always provide material for a mound or for building construction? This collection of papers seeks to explore the interface between structures often considered to be those of the living with those for the dead.

Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface and acknowledgements

List of contributors

1 Introduction: so what are long barrows anyway?

2 Hypogea and the clubhouse: Neolithic Malta's houses of the living and houses for the

dead.

3 Dealing with geometry: Neolithic houses plans and the earliest monuments

4 The long and short of it: memory and practice in the Early Neolithic of Britain and

Ireland

5 Houses of the living, houses of the dead - a view from the Polish lowlands

6 The dead and the Linearbandkeramik longhouse

7 Measuring up – longhouses, enclosures, mounds.

8 Houses Foundational: Gathering Histories at Dorstone Hill, Herefordshire.

9 New work on long barrows in Lincolnshire

10 A Dialogue with the Dead? The relationship between an Early Neolithic rectangular

timber building and a chambered tomb on Holy Island, Anglesey, Northwest Wales

11 House of the living, house of the dead: an open and shut case from Ballyglass, Co.

Mayo?

12 Shaky foundations: romantic nationalism and the development of the ‘Irish model’

of Neolithic settlement

13 Kinnes revisited: Early Neolithic domestic and funerary structures in Scotland

14 Sequencing and a new interpretation at Worbarrow

15 Long barrows or houses: where we are

As Archaeological Investigators for the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments of England and subsequently English Heritage, the authors spent well over 20 years working on the archaeological landscapes of southern England. During that time all the major monuments of the Neolithic period were investigated, Avebury, Stonehenge, Silbury Hill, and their particular brand of earthwork analysis and landscape investigation provides a unique large-scale interpretation of the period. They have prepared numerous reports and journal articles on the subject and written the definitive publication on ‘The field archaeology of Salisbury Plain Training Area’ as well as a companion volume ‘The Avebury Landscape’.

Jim Leary is director of the Archaeology Field School of the Department of Archaeology, University of Reading. His main areas of research are in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age monumentality; the social impact of sea-level rise and submergence of landscapes in the past; and mobility and movement in the past.