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people. The latter, responsible for the spiritual needs of the community, lived exclusively in the north-half of the layout, the direction symbolically linked with the sky.
Elsewhere, the Maya civilisation of Mesoamerica identified north by using the
zenith position of the sun. North represented the realm of deceased god-kings, identified by the region of the pole star. This cosmology was further conceptually
realised by their platform temples being aligned south-north toward the abode of the
god-kings (Wightman, 2007: 908). Regionally closer to home, Andreas Nordberg
(2009) describes how in Old Norse mythology, ‘death was a cosmic drama, altering
human existence in the most dramatic way’ and, after a liminal period, the spirit was
united with the ancestors in the Other World situated in the north. He also found
evidence of religious symbolism in two round stone settings at a grave-field at Sylta,
near Stockholm, Sweden. These structures date to c. 500 AD, were built of perfectly
round stone packing covered by gravel, and contained cremated human remains.
What is important here is Nordberg’s finding by excavation of infilling of the grave
with stones laid in a counter-clockwise direction, interpreted as showing an opposition to the sun’s movement. He argues this pattern of deposition had symbolic
meaning, connected to death, and that ‘the World of the Dead was reverse, upsidedown and opposite to its counterparts in the world of the living’.
Each of the above examples demonstrate how the horizon and sky in the northern
direction symbolised journeys of the dead to the afterlife, contrasting with the life
and light giving properties of the sun and moon symbolised by the inverse sector of
the horizon and sky in which these celestial bodies rose, culminated and set. Such
ethnographic accounts also reveal the variability of mortuary and funerary practices
which accompanied the rituals associated with death. Can these ideas be validly
retro-applied to the more distant prehistoric past, the period predating the Early
Medieval in Ireland and Britain (c. AD 400)? Can such enquiry inform our understanding of the beliefs and traditions related to life, death and the afterlife in the
Neolithic?
Pushing back in time then, a link between the north direction and death is claimed
in the archaeological re-examination of human remains discovered during excavations of an Iron Age hillfort in Broxmouth, East Lothian, in Scotland. The site had
three distinct entities and zones: a formal cemetery outside the hillfort, isolated
graves within the ramparts and scattered disarticulated bones. The cemetery, located
on the extreme north side of the hill as far from the entrance to the complex as was
possible, is thought to reflect an association with darkness and death (Armit
et al., 2013).
Archaeoastronomical investigation of the Bronze Age recumbent stone circle in
Tomnaverie, Scotland by Liz Henty (2014) argues how solar, lunar and stellar
movements in the winter sky were likely sacred to the builders and monumentally
enshrined. Henty hypothesises that Bronze Age ideas about death were ‘mirrored in
the sky’ and, drawing on an interview with the archaeologist Richard Bradley,
reports that Bradley now considers ‘circles as being related to the sky and to light;
and since they face the dark part of the sky where light decreases, this is how they
are linked to the dead and the idea of going down into the underworld’.
F. Prendergast
people. The latter, responsible for the spiritual needs of the community, lived exclusively in the north-half of the layout, the direction symbolically linked with the sky.
Elsewhere, the Maya civilisation of Mesoamerica identified north by using the
zenith position of the sun. North represented the realm of deceased god-kings, identified by the region of the pole star. This cosmology was further conceptually
realised by their platform temples being aligned south-north toward the abode of the
god-kings (Wightman, 2007: 908). Regionally closer to home, Andreas Nordberg
(2009) describes how in Old Norse mythology, ‘death was a cosmic drama, altering
human existence in the most dramatic way’ and, after a liminal period, the spirit was
united with the ancestors in the Other World situated in the north. He also found
evidence of religious symbolism in two round stone settings at a grave-field at Sylta,
near Stockholm, Sweden. These structures date to c. 500 AD, were built of perfectly
round stone packing covered by gravel, and contained cremated human remains.
What is important here is Nordberg’s finding by excavation of infilling of the grave
with stones laid in a counter-clockwise direction, interpreted as showing an opposition to the sun’s movement. He argues this pattern of deposition had symbolic
meaning, connected to death, and that ‘the World of the Dead was reverse, upsidedown and opposite to its counterparts in the world of the living’.
Each of the above examples demonstrate how the horizon and sky in the northern
direction symbolised journeys of the dead to the afterlife, contrasting with the life
and light giving properties of the sun and moon symbolised by the inverse sector of
the horizon and sky in which these celestial bodies rose, culminated and set. Such
ethnographic accounts also reveal the variability of mortuary and funerary practices
which accompanied the rituals associated with death. Can these ideas be validly
retro-applied to the more distant prehistoric past, the period predating the Early
Medieval in Ireland and Britain (c. AD 400)? Can such enquiry inform our understanding of the beliefs and traditions related to life, death and the afterlife in the
Neolithic?
Pushing back in time then, a link between the north direction and death is claimed
in the archaeological re-examination of human remains discovered during excavations of an Iron Age hillfort in Broxmouth, East Lothian, in Scotland. The site had
three distinct entities and zones: a formal cemetery outside the hillfort, isolated
graves within the ramparts and scattered disarticulated bones. The cemetery, located
on the extreme north side of the hill as far from the entrance to the complex as was
possible, is thought to reflect an association with darkness and death (Armit
et al., 2013).
Archaeoastronomical investigation of the Bronze Age recumbent stone circle in
Tomnaverie, Scotland by Liz Henty (2014) argues how solar, lunar and stellar
movements in the winter sky were likely sacred to the builders and monumentally
enshrined. Henty hypothesises that Bronze Age ideas about death were ‘mirrored in
the sky’ and, drawing on an interview with the archaeologist Richard Bradley,
reports that Bradley now considers ‘circles as being related to the sky and to light;
and since they face the dark part of the sky where light decreases, this is how they
are linked to the dead and the idea of going down into the underworld’.
F. Prendergast