Archive for the ‘Dead Spirits’ Category

Dancing with Crocodiles: Spirits and Masks Torres Strait Islands

Friday, December 2nd, 2011

Until last week, the Natural History Museum in London had a collection of human bones, gathered as souvenirs and curios by 19th century travellers to the Torres Strait Islands, a chain of small islands running between northern Australia and Papua New Guinea. Despite initial resistance, the Museum finally returned the bones to representatives of the Islanders, who had long campaigned for their ancestral remains – taken with no thought to the desecration inflicted upon traditional beliefs – to be returned. After an hour-long ceremony to commune with the dead spirits, the bones were on their way home.

I thought of these bones when I viewed a crocodile dance mask from the same islands at the British Museum (shown in the photograph above). Unlike the bones, the mask was legitimately presented to a 19th century collector by its maker, a local Chief called Maino, and there is no pressure for its return.

The mask is a compelling object, formed from local wongai wood, but brought alive with turtle-shell inlay, cassowary feathers, hanging charms, and, most impressive of all, teeth formed from the blades of metal saws. It is undeniably beautiful, slightly sinister, and deeply moving.

It was not until the mid-19th century that Torres Strait Islanders had access to such an array of materials. A turbulent period overseen by Maino’s father – a revered warrior and leader – opened up the island to contact and trade. This new openness eventually brought a British scientist to Maino’s shores: Professor Alfred Cort Haddon. From his copious records, it appears Haddon got on splendidly with Maino and this enabled the scientist to study and record many aspects of Torres Strait tradition that might have otherwise been closed to an outsider. One of the most cherished traditions was a spirit dance and, after persuasion, Maino agreed to put on a dance for his British friend.

From Haddon’s notes, it appears that a spirit dance was a means for the community to contact deceased ancestors. Often part of a mortuary ritual, the dance took place at a special ceremonial ground called a ‘kod’. Dancers, known as ‘markai’, impersonated dead ancestors so accurately that people in the crowd immediately recognised who it was being portrayed. Although Haddon does not mention possession, it is possible that the dance was a means of drawing down ancestral spirits and embodying them within the form of the dancers. The accompanying drums and dizzying rhythm would have been more than enough to initiate trance states if this was what the dancers intended.

An important part of the dance was for the totem animal of each family to appear and, in Maino’s case, this was a crocodile. His role was to dance the creature and bring its spirit to the performance.

The crocodile mask fitted over the wearer’s head completely and was held in place by biting on a horizontal bar. Teeth marks show where Maino did this, possibly even during the dance witnessed by Haddon. To see his surroundings, Maino would have looked out of the crocodile’s jaw, perhaps giving him a different view of reality and of the ancestral spirits descending into other dancers.

After the performance, Haddon asked to purchase the mask and other dance regalia, including Maino’s drum. On his return to Britain, Haddon donated the objects to the British Museum where they now housed. Maino got fair trade in return and there is even a record of Haddon giving calico and tobacco to Maino’s mother-in-law as part of the payment. In Torres Strait society, this was considered a smart move.

In letting Haddon collect the objects and record the ceremonies, Maino thought that he was preserving a record for the future. His faith in this regard was visionary. Haddon’s collection – including all his notebooks – are still consulted by Torres Strait Islanders to learn about their culture and traditions and to serve as inspiration for modern craftspeople. As for Haddon, he was eventually adopted into Maino’s family and, wherever he travelled in the South Seas, he would always introduce himself as ‘Haddon, a crocodile man’.

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Baskets and Belonging: Aboriginal Australian Cosmology

Friday, August 12th, 2011

There is a wonderful exhibition at the British Museum this summer about Aboriginal basket making in Australia. Truth is, I almost didn’t bother with it as, pushed for time, I couldn’t see how baskets could possibly be that interesting. How wrong I was. The exhibition is a gem and had themes that immediately resonated with the circularity of death and rebirth, revealing much about the Aboriginal view of the world.

Basket making is an ancient activity in Australia. Rock art from 20,000 years ago shows people using baskets that their descendants still made until very recently.

It is usually, although not exclusively, women who create the baskets. Using traditional techniques and long established patterns, they form each basket by plaiting fibres collected from the bush around them. This entails an intimate knowledge of not just the environment but also the best times for collecting, whether it is during the dry season or after heavy rains. It connects people to their land.

Although people birth the baskets and give them life, some have even stronger links with parturition and long thin baskets, often with a tell-tale protuberance at their base, contain dried umbilical cords from a baby’s birth.

These, and other baskets, often have decoration on their sides, mostly geometric shapes or stripes. People leave the rear undecorated, however, so that the paint will not rub off as the baskets hang against the back. The pigments are all earth based and are the same as those used in rock art, linking the two medium together. Both the colour and designs transmit tribal identity and ancestral knowledge of the region. People can read a basket and know about the life of its owner. Baskets become symbols of belonging and carrying a basket is akin to carrying the land.

Some baskets go deeper still and some, woven from fibre and wool pulled from the blankets European missionaries once doled out, hold pituri, a nicotine based hallucinogen that is chewed by senior men. These baskets are small, brightly coloured, and shaped like a well-stuffed banana. The exhibition, uniquely, has several bags still containing their original pituri leaves.

Upon death, people carry provisions to the funeral in baskets. Usually people use these same baskets for hunting or carrying food and they are plain and undecorated. When people take them to funerals, however, they paint each basket, adapting designs used to decorate bodies for ceremonies. It is as if the baskets become surrogates for the deceased and, after the funeral, people hang them upside-down on the top of the poles that mark the mortuary ground. The baskets become a memorial that will slowly disintegrate over time. Occasionally, people will retain some bones from the dead and, inevitably, they store these in baskets.

Basket making is undergoing a renaissance among Aboriginal people, partly due to the introduction of coiling. Due to the restrictions on innovation among traditional basket weaving, this new style allows people to experiment and try new things. Some waste products have been given new life through basket making with plastic strapping tape making colourful and hardwearing baskets. The traditional styles usually last only three years with constant use. Finally, there are those who gather damaged fishing nets washed up on the coast. Known locally as ghost nets, the fibre makes colourful and strong baskets, adding another facet to the history of the region and people’s relationship with the land they inhabit.

The exhibition at the British Museum runs until 11 September and is free to enter. Spend a while absorbing the power of these beautiful objects and let these words of Verna Nichols, an Aboriginal basket maker from Tasmania, roll around your mind. “The baskets are not empty. They are full of makers, their stories, their thoughts while making. The baskets are never empty.”

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Dark Shamanism: Embracing the Shadow

Friday, July 8th, 2011

I once visited a place in Siberia that local people considered so evil that I needed to purify beforehand, bathing in sacred waters and staying the preceding night close to a mountain sacred to Buddhist tradition. To me, the rock plateau that my guides took me to was beautiful, with views far across the Mongolian steppe, but it was not a place to linger. At the base of the rock lay 36 black shamans, killed whilst in trance by a Buddhist monk and buried there for their spirits to fester malevolence for all time. That salutary visit made me realise that not everything about shamanism was either positive or pleasant.

Many traditional shamans can curse as well as cure. For them, illness and bad fortune is often a direct result of dark shamans inflicting malignant energy upon an individual, usually via spirit arrows they send whilst in trance. Extracting these arrows from a patient requires the shaman to understand and have a working knowledge of how they are formed and sent. After extraction, many shamans have no hesitation in sending them back to the dark shaman; cursing the malefactor as he or she curses others.

In a similar manner, I have no hesitation in defending myself, sometimes verbally, sometimes legally, but often spiritually, putting up barriers against harm and baleful influence. But it has never crossed my mind to curse anyone or send malevolent energy their way. The practicalities of doing so would not be hard – if I can extract negative energy from an individual then I can certainly insert the same – but it just feels wrong. I am sure traditional shamans would just shake their heads and say that I am too soft and my shamanic practice too sanitised by Western views of what is right and what is wrong. Maybe they are right.

Some shamans go further still and we are probably all familiar with the historical Jivaro (now called Shuar) from the Amazon and their practice of capturing heads of enemies. They shrink the heads in order to trap the soul of the person and prevent it from gaining revenge from the otherworld. To the Jivaro, this was not a bad or evil practice but just common sense when feuds between communities could rapidly turn into violent and prolonged confrontation.

Other Amazonian shamans seek more than heads from the slain and will stalk and capture victims who they ritually, and extremely sadistically, torture to death. The precise details are enough to give any seasoned anthropologist nightmares. The shamans then bury the body. When it begins to putrefy several days later – the heat of the Amazon speeding the process – they go back to taste the flesh. If it is sweet like a rotting pineapple, they will take body parts from the corpse and use them as power objects. Whilst many of us might have power objects that we use in our practice, very few would be prepared to go to such hideous lengths to obtain them.

At a significantly lower level of ghastliness, but still unsettling to Western minds, blood sacrifice is extremely common in tribal societies and is often connected with shamanic ritual. In North America, supplicants may offer their own flesh to the spirits and in the Yuwipi ceremony, this may leave people bleeding profusely where they cut flesh from their arms to wrap in cloth as offerings. Similarly, whilst dancing the Sun Dance, people pierce their flesh with hooks connected to the sacred tree at the centre of the dance and rip them out as the climax to the ceremony. Elsewhere, people offer animal sacrifice to the spirits and I have attended rituals in traditional communities where people have slaughtered and burnt sheep for their ancestors. Inca shamans use guinea pigs to diagnose and heal illness, rubbing the patient with the animal until the malignant spirit leaves its host and attaches to the guinea pig. After that, killing the animal prevents the spirit doing further harm. Clearly, this attitude towards sacrifice is not shared in the West, where self-harm is considered a mental disturbance and animal protection laws prevent any form of animal sacrifice.

There is a huge divergence between our Western practice of shamanism and the darker ways of traditional shamans from tribal societies. Does this weaken our practice, leaving it overly sanitised and removing us from the bloody, violent, and occasionally death-ridden origins of our path? Indeed, would there be a demand for weekend workshops on how to curse, how to trap souls of the dying, or even how to procure power objects from the decaying copses of the dead? Possibly not. But these are all parts of shamanism that we ignore at our peril. The world is not always as benign as we might like it to be and knowing how to attack is, if nothing else, useful for defence. As traditional shamans might tell us, if we do not know how to curse, then how can we know how to cure? Maybe we need to look again at dark shamanism and not only embrace our own shadow but that of our tradition too. But remember, in the immortal words of Sergeant Esterhaus: Let’s be careful out there.

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Oseberg Shamans: Sailing to Eternity

Friday, March 25th, 2011

In 1903, Norwegian archaeologists made a staggering find: an enormous Viking longboat buried at Oseberg, just south of Oslo. Tomb raiders had beaten the archaeologists to the finest treasure but the boat and remaining contents are still spectacular and the reconstructed vessel, with silver-inlayed stern and towering mast, forms the centrepiece of the Norwegian Ship Museum. Buried within the ship were two women. After cursory analysis, excavators initially reinterred them back into the burial mound, but they were recently exhumed and have now revealed more of their secrets.

Both women were elderly for the time at 70 and 50 years old. Bone analysis showed they had a good, meat-based diet and the younger even picked her teeth with a silver tooth-pick. These were clearly women of status. Archaeologists initially thought that they were wives of farm-owning gentry and some the objects in the grave not filched by the tomb raiders would not look out of place on a farm. But other objects, including the boat itself, were surely too valuable for mere farmer’s wives. So just who were these women and how did they earn their status? A small leather purse gives a clue.

Opening the purse, archaeologists found cannabis seeds. When burnt, they induce trance, famously used by the Scythian shamans recorded by Herodotus. Another item also hints at ritual: a rattle. It was discovered fastened to a post fashioned into an animal head and covered with sinuous knotwork. The tapestries accompanying the women may have illustrated the shamanic rituals in which it was used.

In ancient Norse society, shamanism or seiðr was the preserve of women. Practtioners were known as seiðkona or völva and they entered trance through drugs or by chanting. Whilst in trance, they obtained prophetic visions of the future. In the case of the Oseberg women, the cannabis seeds and rattle would have facilitated the journey.

Interestingly, seiðr was always closely associated with women and the female gender. Its practice was considered ergi or unmanly and male practitioners were reviled and sometimes even sentenced to death for their traoubles. Even the God Odin was taunted by Loki over his use of seiðr and, as a result, he has become important to the GLBT community due to his shifting gender roles.

The burial of the Oseberg women in a ship may also relate to trance journeys to the otherworld. Throughout prehistory and even into historic times, ships were seen as vessels to enable shamans to reach the otherworld and the dead to reach the afterlife. People were buried in graves shaped in the keel of a ship, images of ship keels were inscribed beneath burial mounds, and, in the far north, people engraved images of shamans onto rocks, banging their drums and sailing in ships to the otherworld.

The Oseberg ship had been securely tethered to the earth with an enormous boulder and it seems clear that it was not designed to sail anywhere in this world. But maybe its purpose was to take the two women, possibly seiðkona – practitioners of Norse shamanism – on their final journey beyond this world and into another. It was a route they had probably followed many times through their lives except, this time, it was to be their last.

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Death and Rebirth in Byzantine Sicily

Friday, February 25th, 2011

Death and rebirth is a common theme of many religions, often with a God dying and being reborn at certain times of the year. In shamanic communities, death and rebirth also alludes to the shamanic journey and the physical state of the shaman as he or she enters and returns from the otherworld.

Death and rebirth is also central to the Christian faith, with Jesus dying on the cross on Good Friday to be resurrected two days later on Easter Sunday. Within Christianity, such a cycle of death and rebirth seems entirely limited to Jesus, however, with the only hope of rebirth for ordinary mortals being in the afterlife. In fact, having the ability to die and be reborn may even be viewed as heretical and against the natural order determined by God.

It is on this basis that recent discoveries at the Byzantine village of Kaukana, on Sicily, are so interesting. Between AD 580 to cAD 640, a house within Kaukana was built, occupied, and finally abandoned when wind-blown sand engulfed the interior. Within the confines of the house, and probably constructed after the occupants had moved out, is a tomb, built above ground in the style usually reserved for high-status individuals. Inside were a woman and her daughter. Finding such a tomb within a house, at this date, is highly unusual.

Evidence around the tomb – a hearth for cooking and copious food remains – suggests that people were returning to the tomb to feast with the dead spirits that lay within. This was frowned upon by religious authorities, and they would have been horrified to learn that there was also a small hole in the covering of the tomb to allow libations and other choice morsels to be passed to the dead woman inside.

We know that the occupants of the tomb were Christian since there are many symbols with alpha and omega signs; clearly those burying the woman thought that they were important to include. So, the question is: why did people – probably Christian themselves – defy their own tradition and bury a woman in a high-status tomb, in a house (possibly her own), and then continue to visit the site to cook and share food with the deceased? A strange mark on the woman’s cranium might provide the answer.

A small dimple at the back of the skull, as well as signs of water-on-the-brain, suggests meningocele, a condition leading to headaches and frequent fainting fits. It is the fits that are significant. A woman who regularly faints with seizures, only to rise again a few minutes later, may have been thought to be divinely touched, even replicating the death and resurrection of Jesus himself. In Renaissance times, St Catherine was venerated for precisely these qualities.

At Kaukana, was the posthumous treatment of the woman because people revered her power or did they fear her reach, even after death? Or did they think that she might possibly rise once again and kept her tended and fed for this possibility?

The dig, led by Professor Roger Wilson of the University of Columbia, returns to Sicily this year and will attempt to uncover more about this remarkable woman and her powers of resurrection.

More information on the University of British Columbia website.

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Old Bones: The Reburial Issue in the UK

Friday, December 3rd, 2010

With no specific legislation determining how archaeologists excavate, handle, and curate bones, the Ministry of Justice has ruled that the Burial Act of 1857 will govern archaeologists excavating any human remains. This requires reburial after a maximum of two years and for the initial excavation and handling of the bones to be screened from the public.

This historical Act was designed to cover the expansion of our cities over contemporary cemeteries, where developers would haul out Auntie Mildred in front of horrified relatives and grind up her bones for dog meal. In these circumstances, the Act worked well. Archaeological excavation is clearly different and perhaps requires different rules.

It seems unnecessary for the excavation of human remains to be screened from the public. This is our past and if remains need to be removed from the ground (which they often do before development or, exceptionally and arguably, if they are particularly important for the advancement of knowledge), it should be done within the community and observed by those members of the community who wish to witness the event. It should not be hidden behind green gauze. This smacks of secrecy and a lack of respect for the descendants of the bones, which could, theoretically, include us all.

Reburial after two years is also problematic if we are going to gain all the information we can from the bones. My own research relies on work undertaken on human remains so I am not going to be hypocritical and suggest that such research is limited. The bones excavated from Stonehenge in 2008 were expected to be in the laboratory undergoing tests until 2015. This will not now happen and information about our shared human past will potentially be lost.

If Ötzi the Iceman had been reburied after two years, the loss of information from his remains would be incalculable since new discoveries continue with the advance of technology. In some cases, old bones have even helped medical science understand the spread of disease such as leprosy and this has helped in its management.

For me, where bones can add to the sum of human knowledge, they should be studied. This is not disrespectful to the ancient dead but an attempt to know them and their world better. This is what I try to do through my research and writing. From a spiritual standpoint, my feeling is that the ancestors would not object to this.

The real problem comes with reburial. Archaeologists often want the bones retained (or displayed in museums) whereas others want them reinterred in the ground (and it should be pointed out that the current legislation does not require reburial in the same location or in the same context as the remains were excavated. In particular, grave goods or offerings are not covered under the Act).

Museum displays of human remains always make me feel uncomfortable but I realise I am in a minority compared to the general population. I especially do not like the remains displayed as artefacts and, if they are going to remain in museums (which seems likely), there needs to be a better way to display them. As things stand, I don’t think people appreciate what they are witnessing or are encouraged to reflect upon the individual that the bones represent. I would separate human remains from the main gallery and attempt to inspire some reverence upon observers, perhaps by darkening the room and letting the remains be the sole focus of study. It would also be advantageous if something of the sanctity of the burial rite could be retained. The Russians certainly demand respect from the tourist hoards that visit Lenin’s body every year.

Whilst it would be nice if all bones could be excavated, studied, and returned to their original place of burial (and this should perhaps be the aim, however infrequently it occurs in practice), some bones will inevitably be retained, either for scientific reasons or because their place of burial no longer exists.

For storage, maybe a compromise (and we do need a compromise) is to build dedicated charnel houses – preferably underground – to replace the myriad cardboard boxes in scattered museums. Bones could be sorted and stored close to their point of excavation in much the same way that Neolithic people stored bones in chambered tombs. Access would be granted to researchers and the public, with space specifically reserved for education, ritual, or even private contemplation. Anyone wanting to remove the bones for use – whether it is for scientific research, community education, or ritual – would need to demonstrate that they could look after the remains and have the wherewithal to do so. Ideally, this would lead to collaboration between spiritual use and academic research where bones were entrusted to joint temporary custodianship and resources pooled accordingly. Recently in Japan, for example, a Shinto priest worked with the spirit of an Egyptian mummy prior to its display in an exhibition. I accept that some remains may be too fragile or too valuable to be released but provision could be made for some level of interaction at the charnel house.

This is an emotive subject and I hope that I have not offended any deeply held views; reburial inflames passions unlike anything else. But without movement on both sides, the current unacceptable situation will remain. New rules are required, both to govern the initial archaeological excavation and the respectful curation or reburial of remains. The presently unworkable impasse affords an opportunity for the entire issue to be discussed and a new approach adopted that better reflects concerns and aspirations on all sides. I hope we can work something out.

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Journeys to the Underworld in Iron Age Scotland

Wednesday, November 3rd, 2010

The recent discovery of High Pasture Cave on the Isle of Skye again highlights the Iron Age tradition of interacting with subterranean spaces. Here, people had carved steps leading down into a limestone cave, where they deposited butchered pig remains and, just before sealing the entrance at around 100 BC, deposited a woman and her two children, one newborn and one a foetus.

The excavator called the steps an entrance to the ‘underworld’ and it may be that by descending their course people did feel as if they had entered an alternative reality. High Pasture Cave is not alone, however.

As is well-known, at Howe on Orkney, a broch was positioned directly over a Neolithic chambered tomb. This was no accident since the entrance to the broch aligns exactly with the entrance to the tomb and people even dug an access to the burial chamber and cleared out its contents. As if to acknowledge that this remained a place of death, however, the Iron Age occupants left a cup-marked stone in the passage they dug (a design long associated with mortuary use) and they may have even buried their own dead there. This mirrors High Pasture Cave where the symbolism of death was also introduced into the space. At Quanterness, another broch in Orkney built over a chambered tomb, the original entrance passage into the chamber was retained and even the ancient human remains were left in place.

 However, there is a subtle difference between the two classes of human remains. The dead that Iron Age people introduced into these places were likely known to them – the woman from High Pasture Cave was certainly local – whereas the existing bones in the chambered tombs would have been unidentifiable and recognisably older.

Some tombs that were not covered by later houses, such as the Calf of Eday, also in Orkney, seem to have been the focus for feasting during the Iron Age, as copious pottery and animal bones were discarded around them. Moreover, at Unival on North Uist, the chamber of a tomb was incorporated into an Iron Age roundhouse and used as a cooking pit. This also matches High Pasture Cave, with its collection of butchered pig remains.

Cooking and other food preparation may have been seen as a process of transformation, where something raw and inedible, becomes something cooked and life-sustaining. However, there may have been even more at stake. Receiving food that had been cooked in a place associated with the dead may have been equated with taking life out of death and is striking that the brochs themselves emerge from an unproductive, almost dead zone, between the cultivated land and the sea. The two themes seem to mirror one another.

Even where brochs did not cover burial chambers, people sometimes dug steps leading to small cisterns, often naturally filling with water. Whilst these may have been wells, it would surely have been far more convenient to dig a conventional shaft and use a bucket rather than risk dark, slippery steps. Moreover, a similar well was dug into an actual burial mound at Mine Howe on Orkney; the small cistern at its base again filling with water. But perhaps people did collect their water from these places, once again drawing sustenance from an otherworldly location.

In each case, it seems that different themes are interposed and, to an extent, contrasted. The subterranean caves, cisterns, and tombs were places where things could move and transform from one state into another. Animal carcasses became food, raw became cooked, and the newly dead of the Iron Age communities became one with the ancestors of aeons past. Visiting these places, interacting with the themes that were represented there, and then emerging back into this world must have been a powerful experience, laced with symbolism and meaning. Like Aeneas’ experience recorded in Classical mythology, here were journeys to the underworld, except that these particular visits occurred in Iron Age Scotland.

For those interested, more information on High Pasture Cave can be found at High Pasture Cave

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Flaying the Skin of the Dead

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Necropants are a gruesome and unsettling method that a sorcerer used to get rich in old Iceland.

With agreement prior to death, the sorcerer exhumed the corpse of a man and flayed its skin, in one piece, from the waist down. After tanning, the sorcerer donned the skin like a pair of pants.

He then stole a coin and placed it in the natural ‘purse’ of the necropants: the cavity formed by the scrotum. This reputedly attracted more coins and hence the sorcerer became wealthy.

Before his death, the sorcerer had to pass the necropants to another. He did this by having the new owner place his right leg in one side of the pants whilst the sorcerer still has his left leg in the other. In this way, the power of the pants would pass from one individual to another.

The Museum of Witchcraft and Sorcery in Iceland has a pair of necropants on display. They resemble the preserved skin of the bog bodies and hint at beliefs that may have their roots in very ancient times.

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Tombs of Rebirth

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

This is the third of five edited extracts to be posted this week from my new book, Prehistoric Belief: Shamans, Trance and the Afterlife. After the Mesolithic yesterday, we now move into the Neolithic, when people began to build monuments and vast tombs to hold the remains of their dead.

We stand before the entrance to a large tomb. The stones that form the threshold are massive and provide an eerie presence in the flickering torchlight. The body of the dead woman lies just before us and, sitting over her, is an old man with long greasy hair and, from what we can tell, no teeth. It has been a while since the shaman, for this is what the old man is, ingested the drugs and he is beginning to sway, his chant getting louder. Just then, some younger men to his right start drumming, pounding their hands onto skins, pulled taught over wide-brimmed pots. The shaman gets up slowly and moves into the tomb. There is a gasp; he is now entering the otherworld of the spirits. He emerges almost immediately, his arms filled with bones, some with bits of flesh still hanging off them, and he jabbers incoherently at the small group of mourners about us. The drums continue to pound and we start to feel light-headed ourselves. The entrance to the tomb seems to take on enormous proportions and we know that to enter its confines means never to return. Suddenly, the shaman grasps the corpse of the woman and drags it roughly into the tomb. We can just see him scatter the remains of half-rotted bodies to make enough room. He then disappears from sight, swallowed completely by the tomb. It will be some time before he emerges and we wait, in awe of his powers.

For many traditional people, death has two stages: leaving the world of the living, followed by joining the world of the dead. Between these stages, the spirits of the dead are thought to stay close to the living and, if such a view prevailed in the Neolithic, this may explain why burial places had so much activity that went beyond mere disposal of the corpse. In effect, whilst they remained between the worlds, the dead became a resource that could be approached and perhaps, by undertaking trance journeys, even spoken to as if they were still alive.

It is likely that entire corpses were placed in the entrance passageways or even left outside of the tomb, where they would putrefy and rot. When the remains started to fall apart, certain bones might be removed and used for ceremonies in which the dead spirit may have been contacted. As the bones hardened and lost all resemblance of flesh, some were returned to the tomb, to be sorted and stacked with matching bones that already lay in the far depths of the chamber. Only now would the deceased pass to the afterlife and enter the realm of the dead. The individual had, perhaps, become an ancestor.

Although the interiors of these tombs were sometimes spacious, they were presumably crowded with bones, and the passageways leading to them were often small and cramped. Moreover, the space was probably highly charged with the presence of the dead and may have been considered dangerous even taboo. It is likely that only a certain few had the necessary ability to enter the tomb and remain among the dead. These were the people who regularly moved between this world and the otherworld as part of their vocation: the shamans of the community.

If the shamans were to interact with the spirits of the dead (and even to survive what must have been a hellish experience of being among so many rotting bodies), they needed to shift their consciousness into trance and, besides taking drugs, drumming may have been one way they achieved this. In fact, it seems that some of the tombs were designed to heighten the sound of the drum and to achieve the exact frequency required to facilitate trance. In some Welsh and Irish tombs, there are engraved patterns and these have been matched to the phosphene shapes seen in trances induced by psilocybin mushrooms. Perhaps this was the drug taken by the shaman we saw. Some of these images seem to mark significant stages of the journey into the tomb, perhaps marking places where the spirits needed placating. Even the form of the tomb itself, with a passageway leading to the realm of the spirits, closely matches trance journeys to the otherworld and the shared imagery would have been readily understood as referencing both experiences.

Within some tombs, there is tantalising evidence of the sort of thing shamans might do when they entered the chamber. At Barclodiad y Gawres, in Wales, for example, a stew made from the remains of fish, amphibians, a grass snake, and small mammals, was boiled and then poured over the smouldering remains of a fire, before being covered with small stones and shells. Although the full import of this event can probably never be understood, it is striking how the animals chosen for the stew mirror the realms of water and earth and the amphibians and snake that are at home in both worlds. Perhaps the stew also referenced the ability of the shaman to move between comparable worlds and was therefore a highly symbolic offering to make to the dead.

When the dead had served their community for as long as they were required, they were returned to the tomb to join the serried ranks of the ancestors. The bones now lost their individual identities and it appears that they may have even been sorted into matching groups, each with its own distinct place within the tomb. For the dead spirit, this was probably the time when it was thought to finally make the journey to the afterlife, leaving contact with the world of the living behind.

At a very small number of tombs, the way to the afterlife may have been guided by the rising sun, shining down the entrance passageway and illuminating the chamber itself. Such tombs are generally aligned so that this happens on a significant day, such as the solstices or equinoxes, and this is what happened at Newgrange in Ireland. On the midwinter solstice, the rising sun shone through a slot above the door, constructed so that the beam could be angled correctly to reach all the way to the inner chamber. It was a sight few would have witnessed (and those outside the tomb may have had to form a clear route for the sun’s rays to penetrate) but perhaps it was never meant to be seen by the living. When the sun reached the chamber, it hit a small section of wall, low down on the right hand side. Engraved on the wall were three joined spirals and these flare brightly under the glare of the sun. Is this the sign the dead spirits were waiting for: the illumination of the spiral that symbolised access between the worlds?

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