158
low-precision naked-eye viewing purposes, as would have been the case for sky
watchers in the prehistoric past, these zones are advisedly merged into one entity
termed simply here as the Arc of the Northern Sky.
The belief systems and ritual practices of communities who erected the passage
tombs in Ireland and beyond are clearly unknowable. There is, as described earlier,
general acceptance by archaeologists that Neolithic tomb builders choose locations
for topographical vantage, intervisibility and proximity to an otherworld—conceived as the abode or realm of the deities, perhaps. The hypothesis argued here, and
backed by spatial data, is that a view of the distant horizon was important and preferred above intermediate and restricted horizon ranges at the majority of passage
tombs. The horizon scan data is also hinting at human interest in a distinctive and
culturally meaningful sector—the northern horizon. This lies explicitly and discernibly beyond the northerly rising and setting limits of the moon and sun and is
bounded/delimited by stars which can never set. This is easily determined by mere
observation with the unaided eye. Significantly, if the sky and horizon line are
viewed in any planetarium software, the apparent motions of the sun and moon
looking due south are strikingly perceived as being clockwise or right-handed. In
the opposite direction, looking due north, the apparent motion of all circumpolar
stars is demonstrably anti-clockwise or left-handed. This simple and obvious natural opposition is a duality which makes for a compelling argument/hypothesis—that
the spirits of the dead released by the fires of cremation travelled into the north sky,
rising above the distant horizon in that direction to join with the immortal ancestral
spirits in an imagined otherworld.
In summary, scenic analysis has revealed that visibility of the distant horizon
surrounding most Irish passage tombs was strongly preferred. Moreover, the greatest frequency of such views coincides with a specific sector of the horizon, firstly,
lying beyond the northerly rising and setting limits of the sun and moon and, secondly, framed by the region of circumpolar stars. Might such an orientated view of
the heavens point to a new element in the cosmology of the Neolithic? If ever such
existed, might this reflect underlying principles that are culturally meaningful,
linked to funerary and mortuary processing of the dead and the perceived journey of
their spirits to join with the ancestors in the realm of the northern sky? Inferentially,
was the northern sky a domain considered to be the ancestral world?
6 Death, North and the Otherworld
The passage tomb tradition in Ireland began after the beginning of the fourth millennium BC and ‘is synonymous with the emergence of novel subsistence and settlement patterns but also with the contemporaneous appearance of new ritual and
mortuary traditions, part of which was specially constructed tombs with an accessible chamber’ (Eogan & Cleary, 2017: 739). Construction, especially of the three
mega-tombs at Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth in the Boyne Valley Co. Meath, was
a complex feat of engineering achievement involving the local community over an
F. Prendergast
low-precision naked-eye viewing purposes, as would have been the case for sky
watchers in the prehistoric past, these zones are advisedly merged into one entity
termed simply here as the Arc of the Northern Sky.
The belief systems and ritual practices of communities who erected the passage
tombs in Ireland and beyond are clearly unknowable. There is, as described earlier,
general acceptance by archaeologists that Neolithic tomb builders choose locations
for topographical vantage, intervisibility and proximity to an otherworld—conceived as the abode or realm of the deities, perhaps. The hypothesis argued here, and
backed by spatial data, is that a view of the distant horizon was important and preferred above intermediate and restricted horizon ranges at the majority of passage
tombs. The horizon scan data is also hinting at human interest in a distinctive and
culturally meaningful sector—the northern horizon. This lies explicitly and discernibly beyond the northerly rising and setting limits of the moon and sun and is
bounded/delimited by stars which can never set. This is easily determined by mere
observation with the unaided eye. Significantly, if the sky and horizon line are
viewed in any planetarium software, the apparent motions of the sun and moon
looking due south are strikingly perceived as being clockwise or right-handed. In
the opposite direction, looking due north, the apparent motion of all circumpolar
stars is demonstrably anti-clockwise or left-handed. This simple and obvious natural opposition is a duality which makes for a compelling argument/hypothesis—that
the spirits of the dead released by the fires of cremation travelled into the north sky,
rising above the distant horizon in that direction to join with the immortal ancestral
spirits in an imagined otherworld.
In summary, scenic analysis has revealed that visibility of the distant horizon
surrounding most Irish passage tombs was strongly preferred. Moreover, the greatest frequency of such views coincides with a specific sector of the horizon, firstly,
lying beyond the northerly rising and setting limits of the sun and moon and, secondly, framed by the region of circumpolar stars. Might such an orientated view of
the heavens point to a new element in the cosmology of the Neolithic? If ever such
existed, might this reflect underlying principles that are culturally meaningful,
linked to funerary and mortuary processing of the dead and the perceived journey of
their spirits to join with the ancestors in the realm of the northern sky? Inferentially,
was the northern sky a domain considered to be the ancestral world?
6 Death, North and the Otherworld
The passage tomb tradition in Ireland began after the beginning of the fourth millennium BC and ‘is synonymous with the emergence of novel subsistence and settlement patterns but also with the contemporaneous appearance of new ritual and
mortuary traditions, part of which was specially constructed tombs with an accessible chamber’ (Eogan & Cleary, 2017: 739). Construction, especially of the three
mega-tombs at Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth in the Boyne Valley Co. Meath, was
a complex feat of engineering achievement involving the local community over an
F. Prendergast