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1/ Hi we're Kenny & @AJ_Watson_. We are presenting a Twitter paper on 'analogue cremations in a digital age'. In this age, where anything is possible, why are more & more people choosing to have their cremated remains interred in megalithic burial monuments? #digideath
2/ Let’s start with the phenomenon of long barrow columbaria. These are megalithic burial chambers designed to hold hundreds of vessels containing cremated human remains. Vessel sits within a stone niche. These barrows have chambers, passages & corbelled roofs. #digideath
3/ Now the twist. These monuments were built in the past decade, not the Neolithic. The first was The Long Barrow, Wiltshire (AD2014), brainchild of @TimothyDaw who had the idea in response to seeing people trying to scatter cremated remains at local prehistoric sites #digideath
4/ This started a fashion for prehistoric-inspired barrows: 5 in use, 6 more planned across the UK. Innovators include Toby Angel ( @SacredStonesLtd), @_Tim_Ashton (Soulton), @jobygunner1987, Martin Fildes. There is an appetite for this style of resting place for the future dead.
5/ These are monuments of real beauty, arrangements of sarsen & sandstone, creating peaceful places for storage of the dead but also quiet contemplation in the kind of magical spaces that only megalithic monuments can provide. #digideath
6/ They are constructed with a prehistoric sensibility, mimicking megalithic tomb architecture (within current H&S guidelines!) including associations with additional monuments such as standing stones or henges or incorporating solstice alignments #digideath
7/ This phenomenon suggests an interest in non-traditional and non-denominational mortuary spaces with sustainable building practices. What's less clear is how much an interest in prehistory motivates people to purchase niches in the barrows for them or loved ones #digideath
8/ We are in the early stages of a project researching this phenomenon, exploring the motivations of builders, architects, users, thinking about how prehistoric ways of doing things continue to have resonance today. #digideath
9/ There's an engaged community of barrow columbaria builders & owners, learning from one another, exploring the social value & emotional depth of their barrows, building communities of the living and future dead #digideath
10/ This very evening Sacred Stones & Soulton Hall host a zoom panel discussion on “Contemporary Barrows in the landscape” with chat about ‘the ideas involved, from archaeology to culture’ & ‘conversation and interpretation from a broader audience’ https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/contemporary-barrows-in-the-landscape-the-soulton-long-barrow-tickets-136599082533?aff=ebdssbeac
11/ There is a community of the future dead, those who have bought niches for their own remains to be stored, or those of loved ones. Some visit beforehand, choose their niche & urn, reserving their shelf space. Other can’t visit: this is an international clientele. #digideath
12/ Barrows also serve the living through memorialisation. The erection of a standing stone at Soulton in 2020 in memory of those who have died of Covid in the UK is a powerful gesture. Perhaps we need megaliths now more than ever to come to terms with the modern condition?
13/ There is something subversive about choosing this ancient form of burial & memorialisation. To what extent is this a reaction to the digital lives we live? Can we subvert the online digital noisy lives we live with an offline analogue quiet eternal afterlife? #DigiDeath
14/ We'd like to thank Tim Daw, Tim Ashton, Toby Angel, Jo Vassie & Joby Wheatley for their help with our project so far and providing images for this presentation. Watch this space as our contemporary archaeology of prehistory project develops. Thanks for reading! #DigiDeath
