‘No miserable mourning’ at Stone Age-style burial site
A “NEOLITHIC” burial site has opened in Kent for people who want to “celebrate people’s lives and not mourn their passing”.
The Stone Age-style long barrow has been built in the Lost Village of Dode by Doug Chapman and contains a columbarium, which stores human remains, for around 800 urns.
Barrows, which were common across western Europe in the Neolithic period, are long earthen mounds, sometimes with stone or timber structures, within which human remains are buried.
The Neolithic period, from 10,000 to 1,900 BC, came at the end of the Stone Age, which started 3.4 million years ago.
It was notable for the construction of sites such as Stonehenge and the development of extensive cultural and trade ties with continental Europe. Metalwork, however, remained rare and tools and weapons were mostly stone.
Mr Chapman said there was no historical record of how Stone Age Britons would have marked death, but that he had no plan to hold funerals at Dode.
“Basically, this is a modern interpretation of a 5,000-year-old barrow,” Mr Chapman, the keeper of Dode, said.
“They won’t be funerals. We’ve already started writing the ceremonies and they’re going to be celebrations of life, they’re not going to be miserable.
“It’s about celebrating people’s lives and not mourning their passing,” Mr Chapman said.
The village of Dode, in the North Downs, was abandoned in the 14th century after its inhabitants were wiped out by the plague.
All that remained was a Norman church, which Mr Chapman bought in the 1990s and restored to working order after 400 years of dilapidation.