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:
“Some sepulcher, remote, alone,
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In childhood, many an idle stone—
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne’er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
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—Jessamyn West (1902–1984)