TUMULUS

This article appears in Volume V27, Page 376 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: TUM-VAN

TUMULUS , a Latin word meaning a
heap or mound, also used in classical
writings in the secondary sense of a
grave. In Roman epitaphs we meet
with the

formula

tumulum faciendum
curavit, meaning the grave and its
monument; and on the inscribed
monumental stones placed over the
early Christian

graves

GRAVES, ALFRED PERCEVAL (1846— )

of Gaul and
Britain the phrase in hoc tumulo facet expresses the same idea.
But among archaeologists the word is usually restricted
in its technical modern application to a sepulchral mound
of greater or less magnitude. The mound may be of earth,
or of stones with a covering of earth, or may be entirely
composed of stones. In the latter case, if the tumulus of stones
covers a megalithic cist or a sepulchral chamber with a passage
leading into it from the outside, it is often called a dolmen.
(See STONE MONUMENTS, BARROW and

CAIRN

CAIRN (in Gaelic and Welsh, Carn)

.) The custom of
constructing sepulchral tumuli was widely prevalent throughout
the prehistoric ages and is referred to in the early literature
of various races as a fitting commemoration of the illustrious
dead. Prehistoric tumuli are found abundantly in almost all
parts of Europe and Asia from Britain to Japan. They occur
with frequency also in northern Africa, and in many parts of
North and

South

SOUTH
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634–1716)

America the aboriginal populations have
practised similar customs. Sepulchral tumuli, however, vary
so much in shape and size that the external

appearance

APPEARANCE (from Lat. apparere, to appear)

is no
criterion of age or origin. In North America, especially in the
Wisconsin region, there are numerous mounds made in shapes
resembling the figures of animals, birds or even human forms.
These have not been often found to be sepulchral, but they are
associated with sepulchral mounds of the

ordinary

ORDINARY (med. Lat. ordinarius, Fr. ordinaire)

form, some
of which are as much as 300 ft. in

diameter

DIAMETER (from the Cr. &a, through, µErpov, measure)

and 90 ft. in height.
Perhaps the largest tumulus on record is the tomb of Alyattes, king of

Lydia

LYDIA

, situated near Sardis, constructed in his own life-time, before 56o B.c. It is a huge mound, 118o ft. in

diameter

DIAMETER (from the Cr. &a, through, µErpov, measure)

and 200 ft. high. In

south

SOUTH
SOUTH, ROBERT (1634–1716)

-eastern Europe, and especially in southern Russia, the sepulchral tumuli are very numerous and often of

great

GREAT

size, reaching occasionally to 400 ft. in circumference and over roo ft.-in height. These are mostly of the period of the Greek colonies of the Tauric Chersonese, dating from about the 5th century B.C. to about the and century A.D., and their contents

bear

striking testimony to the wealth and culture of the people who reared them.

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