Tomb Interior
The final 2.7 m of the chamber, near the north end, is set off as a separate compartment by two vertically set slabs, leaving a 60 cm gap in the middle. The chamber formed by these slabs had two unconnected areas of cobbled floor, one of larger slabs in the west, and one of rubble in the east. Two postholes set in front of the back wall might indicate internal supports for a ceiling.
The state of the skeletons recovered, all of them inarticulate or only partially articulate, placed in a sequence of distinct layers, indicates that the dead were either allowed to decay partially outside the tomb (excarnation), or that their remains were reorganised after partial or complete decomposition within the tomb. It is doubtful whether the bodies entered the tomb through its entrance, as the uppermost levels of burials are only 30 cm under the top of the orthostaths. Interestingly, the same doubt has been raised on different grounds, namely the narrow Seelenloch entrances, at Züschen, Lohra and Altendorf.
Read more about this topic: Niedertiefenbach (megalithic Tomb)
Famous quotes containing the words tomb and/or interior:
“Laid out for death, let thy last kindness be
With leaves and moss-work for to cover me:
And while the wood-nymphs my cold corpse inter,
Sing thou my dirge, sweet-warbling chorister!
For epitaph, in foliage, next write this:
Here, here the tomb of Robin Herrick is.”
—Robert Herrick (1591–1674)
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—Thomas Merton (1915–1968)