I have just been looking at reports of the Excavations at Cladh Hallan in South Uist. There are remarkable reports of burials within houses.
The original article from archaeology@sheffield
Another report (not yet on the net) from BBC History magazine adds that the lower jaw in the adult male burial was a replacemnent from a younger man.
Were these sacrifices or just a way of remembering Aunt Flo, Uncle Joe and Little Mo. I seem to recall that burials of this sort are reported from all over the world.
The most dramatic finds were four human skeletons buried as foundation deposits beneath the primary floor of each of the three roundhouses. As predicted by the sunwise model (in which sunwise passage around the house represented the cycle of birth to death), there was a burial in each northeast quarter - a partially articulated 3-year-old child in the south house, a 12-year-old in the central house and an adult male (35-39) in the northern house. The latter was tightly flexed and, like the child under the south house, was probably long dead before insertion into its pit. This unfortunate individual had no teeth at all in his upper jaw but all those in his lower jaw were present – we wonder whether his upper teeth were deliberately extracted. A fourth burial of an adult female (45-60 years old), also crouched, was placed in the south of the north house. In each hand she held an upper lateral incisor (taken from her own mouth). Since all three houses were built simultaneously, these burial events were most probably carried out together or within a short space of time - the whole terrace would have required some 7-8 individuals for the foundation event. The north house received a third human burial, a 1-month old infant buried on its front within the top of a posthole in the northeast quadrant prior to the house's renovation for a third floor. Outside the entrance to the north house there was a stone cremation platform (in use during the house's construction or earliest use) and an adjacent double pit which contained an articulating adult human knee.
The original article from archaeology@sheffield
Another report (not yet on the net) from BBC History magazine adds that the lower jaw in the adult male burial was a replacemnent from a younger man.
Were these sacrifices or just a way of remembering Aunt Flo, Uncle Joe and Little Mo. I seem to recall that burials of this sort are reported from all over the world.