Chamber tomb: Encyclopedia - Chamber tomb

Chamber tomb

A chamber tomb is a tomb for burial used in many different cultures. In the case of individual burials, the chamber is thought to signify a higher status for the interree than a simple grave. Built from rock or sometimes wood, the chambers could also serve as places for storage of the dead from one family or social group and were often used over long periods for the placemnet of multiple burials. There are numerous terms for them depending on the period, design and region in question. Most were built from large stones or megaliths and covered by cairns, barrows or earth, but the term is also applied to tombs cut directly into rock and wooden-chambered tombs covered with earth barrows. Grave goods are a common characteristic of chamber tomb burials.

In Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe stone-built examples are known by the generic term of megalithic tombs.

Chamber tombs are often distinguished by the layout of their chambers and entrances or the shape and material of the structure that covered them, either an earth barrow or stone cairn. A wide variety of local types has been identified, and some designs appear to have influenced others.

Chamber tomb - Types and examples

General terms:

• Chambered cairns
• Chambered long barrows
• Cromlechs, dolmens and Hunebedden
• Corbelled tombs
• Chamber tumulus

• Gallery graves including:
  • Allées couvertes
  • Court cairns
  • Giants' graves
  • Navetas
  • the Peak District tomb group
  • Severn-Cotswold or Cotswold-Severn tombs
  • Transepted gallery graves
  • Wedge-shaped gallery graves

• Entrance graves such as
  • Portal dolmens
  • Scillonian entrance graves

• Passage graves including:
  • The tholos tombs of Mycenaean Greece.
  • V-shaped passage graves
  • Cruciform passage graves
  • Clava cairns

• Other types:
  • Domus de Janas
  • Dysser
  • Medway tombs
  • Shaft and chamber tombs

Categories: Monument types | Megalithic monuments | European archaeology | Death customs

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Chamber tomb", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki