Form and Purposes
Court tombs are rectangular burial chambers. They are distinguished by their roofless, oval forecourt at the entrance. Large slabs of rock were used to make the walls and roof of the very basic burial chamber, normally located at one end of the cairn, which although usually blocked after use could be immediately accessed from the outside courtyard. They are gallery graves rather than passage graves, since they lack any significant passage.
They usually had two functions: the chamber to serve as a tomb, and the courtyard to accommodate a ritual. Objects were often buried with the deceased, as the first megalithic farmers of this time believed in life after death.
Read more about this topic: Court Cairn
Famous quotes containing the words form and/or purposes:
“The detective novel is the art-for-art’s-sake of our yawning Philistinism, the classic example of a specialized form of art removed from contact with the life it pretends to build on.”
—V.S. (Victor Sawdon)
“O, I am smitten with a hatchet’s jaw;
And that in deed and not in word alone.
chorus: I thought I heard a sound within the house
Unlike the voice of one that jumps for joy.
He splits my skull, not in a friendly way,
Once more: he purposes to kill me dead”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)