ABSTRACT
Collective burial Throughout the western seaboard countries of Europe during the neolithic period there was a tradition of collective burial of the dead. From Scandinavia, through Britain to Spain some social or religious cult required that its members be buried together in a tomb, either individually, one at a time, or as a group. The origin of this burial custom is one of the great problems of western archaeology to which no satisfactory answer has as yet been found. Like farming, the ideology of the cult probably spread by word of mouth rather than by folk movement and tombs developed in different, although essentially similar, ways in each country. In the north and west of Britain stone-built burial vaults which could be entered whenever desired followed distinctive regional styles, for example the Cotswold-Severn tombs, the Clyde cairns and the Medway megaliths. In the south and east, where stone was usually lacking, long barrows were constructed of earth over sealed wooden or turf burial chambers. Similar examples are also found in eastern Scotland. Incidentally, mounds built mainly of earth or chalk are called barrows while the term cairn is reserved for mounds of stones.
