‘You cannot take it with you’ may be a common piece of wisdom today, but it seems that this sentiment has not always been popular. In prehistory, some people were generously provided for on their journey into death, and funerary finds often extend beyond an excavated skeleton to encompass the objects that accompanied an individual into the ground; traces of rituals, like feasting, that surrounded their burial; and the architecture that was built to house the dead, from humble pits to mighty megalithic tombs. By contrast, material evidence for living communities can be much more ephemeral, placing us in the challenging position of often having a richer dataset for death than for everyday life. It is tempting to take such archaeological evidence at face value, assuming that grand tombs and exotic grave goods were reserved only for kings and princes, while everyone else was buried with rather less lavish attention – or not given a formal burial at all. However, we cannot map modern ways of mourning on to past societies, nor assume that they left us a straightforward record of who was who when they were still alive. Instead, in our recent research (originally published in Antiquity; see ‘Further reading’ below), we argue that, by carefully contextualising ancient DNA evidence with contemporary burial rites, we can develop a new picture of life and death in Neolithic Ireland.
Tombs for Kings?
During the Neolithic, when farming first spread along the Atlantic parts of Europe and more settled lifestyles replaced hunter-gatherer traditions, some of the dead were placed in chambered tombs. Many of these still stand (in contrast to contemporary domestic architecture, little of which remains above ground) and, rather than representing the resting place of just one individual, these were communal monuments containing the remains of multiple people and combining diverse burial practices. Some occupants had been cremated, others were buried unburnt, and some remains were disarticulated and mixed together. Early antiquarians like John Beddoe (1826-1911), who excavated Stoney Littleton Long Barrow in Somerset, tended to interpret these enigmatic arrangements as the burial of a ‘chief’ surrounded by dependents who had probably been put to death to accompany their lord into the afterlife. Today, however, advances in archaeological science offer a much more nuanced view.
Focusing specifically on Neolithic Ireland, these communal tombs were built in a range of different styles. In the earlier Neolithic (c.3800-3300 BC), three main types were constructed: portal tombs, court tombs, and simple passage tombs. This last form, comprising a burial chamber reached by a narrow passage made from large upright stones and covered by a circular stone or earthen mound, continued to be built into the later Neolithic, but from around 3200 BC it took on a much larger scale. The grandest and most famous Irish passage tomb is probably Newgrange which, along with Knowth and Dowth, forms a UNESCO World Heritage Site located at Brú na Bóinne (Bend of the Boyne) in County Meath. Due to the monument’s imposing size and elaborate architecture, Newgrange has long been thought of as an elite burial place, reflecting increased power differences at this time. The antiquarian Thomas Molyneux expressed this view almost 300 years ago, writing in 1726 that ‘we may easily gather ’twas raised in honour of some mighty prince, or person of the greatest power and dignity in his time’ – and, rather more recently, this enduring interpretation appeared to have been confirmed by two different pieces of new genetic evidence from aDNA analysis (see CA 366).
Unlocking Prehistoric Houses