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The Megalithic Portal and Megalith Map : Index >>
General Forum >> Burial positions
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| Author |
Burial positions |
nefer_amun_ra
Joined:
01-11-2003
Messages: 1
from guildford england
 OFF-Line
|  Posted 02-11-2003 at 15:56
Em Hotep to you all. This will be my first post then!
So I introduce myself...well hi (now runs and hides behind largest stone in the circle and peeps through fingers!)
Well yes I know it is not a cheerful subject exactly but it is one that has got me so interested I would like to study it further. Has anyone to your knowledge done any research or written anything on this subject lately? Burial positions.
We will never know why the dead were buried facing east or west, with grave goods or without. Why (in the yorkshire burials of "beaker folk") men had their heads to the east women to the west both face south (is that towards the moon?). Later it was more common to dig graves N/S and bury the dead facing east. There is some theory that some "clans" put up their dead on biers until the remains could be placed carefully in barrows. Or that some cremated their dead. Avebury's Avenue could have been an avenue for a funerial prossession.
We don't know how neolithic people lived or thought, they have very little in common with us but there are a few things that we share, our need
to survive, our love for our children and our kin and our need to give our dead a "fitting" send off in accordance with religion.
Any thoughts?
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Startrack
Joined:
05-01-2004
Messages: 1
from Chippenham, Wiltshire, England
OFF-Line
|  Posted 06-01-2004 at 15:33
Seems to me that putting up dead on a bier may have been an air burial, burying = earth burial, cremation = fire burial; water burial might have been difficult due to lack of large river, lake or ocean to deposit dead in, unless artificial (moats, etc) were built for this purpose.
Re: direction dead were facing: in some modern asian cultures of ancient origin, one sleeps facing certain directions to prevent particular types of spirit interfering with sleep; conversely, one sleeps facing other direction to attract helpful beings.
Male and female have some of our internal energies flowing in opposite internal channels so it might make sense to face in different directions.
These are only conjectures based on some things I know about present descendants of very ancient cultures.
Hope it helps in some way.
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