Reaching into the Underworld: Maeshowe Side-Chamber Apertures as Doorways into an Inverted Land of the Dead
A. J R 1 U H I : O C 1 [email protected] : This paper combines the chaîne opératoire and microhistory methodologies to investi- gate decision-making and intentionality in construction design choices within the internal walls of the Neolithic Orcadian passage grave Maeshowe. Focusing specifi cally on side-chambers and their opposing sidewalls, this study documents that masonry quality is superior on the left-hand side— against the grain of highlighting the right, that novel left-dominant architectural features are notable for their association with rare incising, and that fl uvial sedimentary stones are purposefully inverted. These features of re-orientation, watery inversion and of left for right, engender an interpretation that side-chambers exist within the space of an inverted netherworld, and that their apertures gesture a physical opening into the the Land of the Dead. Thus conjoined, these methodologies generate a comprehensive new hypothesis. : Communal stone-built tombs span the temporal depth and physical breadth of the European Neolithic (Joussaume 1988). One iteration, the passage grave, has a main chamber accessible via a passageway through an encasing circular mound (Robin 2009: 9). The most famous of these, termed cruciform, occur in confi ned groupings along the Atlantic Seaboard, incorporating three side-chambers off of the main chamber (Nordman 1935). This architectural style reached a pinnacle, and an apparent end, in the Orkney Islands north of mainland Scotland with the construction of the unique Maeshowe cairn. Presumed to have been erected toward the end of the Neolithic based on stylistic comparisons (Kilbride-Jones 1973: 79; Renfrew 1979: 31), Maeshowe suff ers a paucity of datable material, such that 14C dates span 3730-2840 cal BC (68% probability, Griffi ths 2016: 287). In terms of its stylistic elements, Maeshowe is composed not of upright menhirs like most tombs, but huge slabs laid as dry-stone walling (fi g. 1a; Petrie 1861). The masonry of the main chamber is unrivalled, and frequently discussed (reviewed in Thomas 2016: 54-62). With an internal cruciform layout the same dimensions as Newgrange, Ireland (pers. obs.), but with a far smaller mound, Maeshowe has an extended low passageway leading to a square main chamber, off of which each of the other walls has a side-chamber (fi g. 1b; Davidson and Henshall 1989: 144). These singular side-chambers have restricted apertures like other Orcadian passage graves, but are—atypically—raised above ground level. Their cuboid volume is constructed with three dry-stone and three whole fl agstone walls. Of these latter, the single ceilingstone caps a vertical backslab supported on an understone, itself resting on the fl oorstone. The ceiling and backslab are equivalent in size, but the understone to fl oorstone proportions vary, creating volume diff erences. The dry- stone walls are the two sidewalls fl anking the backslab, the third forming the front endwall with the aperture into the main chamber abutting one side. Figure 1: (a) Northeast wall of the main chamber at the midwinter sunset (oval: right-side-up waveform; circle: single corner cut-out) with raised Northeast midline side-chamber, and (b) the internal footprint with side-chambers identifi ed by cardinal direction (reproduced with permission of Historic Environment Scotland: SC 342874 and ORD 92/10, respectively). Construction analysis of the interior walling in Neolithic tombs has, so far, focused on material sourcing and building erection (eg. Scarre 2009), with little work investigating design choices beyond colour selection (but see Cummings 2002). Diametricity within designs is signifi cant in the Neolithic (Parker Pearson and Richards 1994: 13). One well-investigated topic is the sidedness (right vs. left) of artwork locations within passage graves. Generally weighted to the right, this trend is well documented in Irish passage graves (Herity 1974: 123; Robin 2009) and Orcadian domestic settings (Hodder 1982: 224). The forced right-hand direc- tionality of these latter (Hodder 1982: 224; Richards 1993: 166), where ‘beds’ on the right are also larger (Childe 1931: 50), provides architectural evidence of right vs. left selectivity. These examples, however, consider only aspects of entering structures, ignoring that the far left is the last reached when “hidden, back, private spaces” (Tilley 2008: 109) may be the most sacred (van Ruysbroeck 1900: 58; see also Scarre 2011: 233) as well as that, upon leaving, right-side aspects are now on the left (Tilley 2008: 120). The investigation here, aiming to analyse such design and construction choices, combines the chaîne opératoire and microhistory methodologies under the for- mer’s premise that a decision is made for each action (Schlanger 1996: 248) and the latter’s assertion that up-close immersion is inherently informative (Cohen 2017: 66). This is enacted by comparing and contrasting the opposing dry-stone sidewalls of Maeshowe’s side-chambers for diff ering prevalences of architectural features. The results show design inversions from the main chamber, supporting a comprehensive new interpretation that these side-chambers exist within an inverted netherworld, as a concept. The notion of a post-bodily-death existence, an enduring state of being following on from the realm of the living, has been argued to be cognitively inherent, deriving from third-party social interactions—the understanding that a person out-of- sight is still independently doing and being (Bering 2006: 456; Hodge 2011a). Via this theory-of-mind neural origin (Grafman et al. 2020: 130-131), people are predisposed toward the belief of an afterlife—and it is in fact more taxing to not do so (Bering 2002: 291; Hodge 2011b: 374). The dead, as a group, are understood as embodied within a specifi c location, even if fi ctional (Hodge 2011b: 385); they are envisioned to be “somewhere doing something” (Hodge 2011a: 10). Concepts of what this realm, the Netherworld as a location, is like are however socially determined, and distinctly separate from the cognitive notion that there is an afterlife (Bek and Lock 2011: 15; Hodge 2011b: 368). In particular for the European Neolithic, this cosmological realm seems to have been envisioned as existing beneath this one— the Underworld (Davies and Robb 2004: 142; Malone and Stoddart 2009: 376). To investigate mortuary design intentions, this study looks beyond the physical and geological aspects of stone constructions (Darvill 2009: 3) and engages with the actual presented assemblage (Fowler 2013: 253). It adopts Creswell’s (1976: 6) and Lemonnier’s (2012: 17-18) belief that “material culture becomes, in a tra- jectory of induced transformations from natural raw material to cultural matter” (Schlanger 1994: 144, emphasis added). That is, that man-made objects do not just encompass physicality and engineering solutions but also socially-driven design choices (Hodder 1993: 269; Robin 2014: 4). The chaîne opératoire methodology, reverse engineering the order of events within an activity, is used by Schlanger (1996) to reassemble fl int debitage to its core. This showcases that each strike, inherently recording a decision enacted, autonomously embodies material knowledge (Budden and Soafer 2009; Strand 2012), socially learned gestures (Apel 2001; Leroi-Gourhan 1993) and inten- tionality (Coupaye 2009: 439; Edmonds 1990). Applications of this methodology to buildings have considered aspects of civil engineering (Gianotti et al. 2011; McFadyen 2006) and event organisation (Benjelloun et al. 2018; Binninger 2008) but tend to leave aside the socially-based design choices also refl ected within the built environment. Stone-built structures have material limitations (Laporte 2015: 18), but it is naïve to dismiss their stones as mundane (Cooney 2009) and their designs as uninformative (Mens 2009). The microhistory methodology, as a purposeful restriction in “the scale of observation” (Levi 1992: 99), intensely investigates singular events, since narrowly- focused studies can contribute signifi cantly to generalities (Borić 2010: 53; Hupperetz 2010: 283). This allows the formation of a comprehen- sive account of embodied decisions through the in-depth, close-up study of the interrelatedness of things (Baires 2017: 251; Cohen 2017: 54) via non-de- structive engagement with exposed walling (Dessales 2017: 77). Therefore, an approach to the interior walling of Neolithic passage graves as artefacts them- selves (Cousseau 2015; Laporte 2015; Laporte et al. 2017) highlights the act of making (Lewis-Williams 2004: 37; MacFadyen 2006: 131; Richards 2004: 72). Purposeful attention is therefore given to deciphering and interpreting design selections (Dobres 1999: 125; Schlanger 1994) as essential to a balanced build- ing interpretation (Mens and Large 2009: 48; Sherwood and Kidder 2011: 73). It particularly considers what social constructs are being manifested (DeMarrais et al. 1996: 16; Scarre 2004: 151) through combined analytical and subjective observations (Domanska 2018: 23; Skeates 2016: 40). Furthermore, gestures of the afterlife are intentionally considered (Robin 2014: 4), frequently ignored among analyses of mortuary constructions (Cavanagh and Laxton 1990: 145). In sum, the chaîne opératoire and microhistory, are conjoined expressly so that material culture can invoke infl uences and “act back” (Buchli and Lucas 2001: 5), thereby allowing the stones to speak for themselves. : The awe-inspiring grandeur and vastness of Maeshowe’s main chamber is diametrically opposed to its side-chambers which barely fi t a single, crouched person. By such movement choreography (Richards 1993: 176), these intimate side-chambers aff ect particular sensory experiences (Sørensen 2016: 76) through their individual atmospheres (Sørensen 2015: 70). Their subjective aesthetics, as ascribed by the author, emote: discombobulating in the right-hand Southeast chamber, calming in the midline Northeast chamber, and dominating in the left- hand Northwest chamber. Each space, varying in execution, engenders diff ering emotive impressions principally by their sidewall masonry designs, as the ceiling, fl oor and back are made of nigh identical slabs. Unlike the main chamber’s construction where all gaps are eliminated (fi g. 1a), side-chamber sidewalls display notably diff erent masonry attributes when com- pared, and the fi nesse in the design and layout divides between sidedness (fi gs 2a,c,e vs. 2b,d,f). The left-hand walls have well-fi tted masonry; the right-hand ones have blatant multiple negative spaces with poor integration between layers. For example, a vertical rectilinear stone needed only to have been slightly shortened to fi t precisely in the upper-left quadrant of the Northeast’s southeast wall (fi g. 2d), not doing so immediately and repeatedly draws the eye. The side-chambers’ left-hand masonry also presents greater complexity imply- ing an increased time investment (Bradley 2000a: 216). This complexity is most apparent through the play of ‘corner cut-outs’: naturally-occurring stones in the Orcadian Old Red Sandstone where an oblong shape is missing from one corner, a rare occurence (fi g. 3). Lost corners otherwise tend to be diagonal breaks (fi g. 2f: bottom row, right-hand stone). Non-funerary Neolithic Orcadian masonry incor- porates the occasional corner cut-out by simply infi lling the analogous negative space (van der Reijden in prep.). Maeshowe, in contrast, shows intentionality through the multiple examples of this form by active duplication, purposeful shaping and elusivity. The southeast wall of the main chamber, to the right of the right-hand aperture, incorporates a pair of square stones—an unusual shape. These two stones appear as a pair capped by a single long stone, but in actuality the left-hand stone has a corner cut-out into which a horizontal stone has been precisely slotted (fi g. 3). The illusion is created by a fi ssure in the aperture stone extending the junction between the blocks and the capping. Fooling the eye like this is an example of the elusivity and ‘hiddenness’ (Gillings 2015a: 2) encountered with corner cut-outs. Corner cut-outs become more complex by their duplication in two side-chambers, where at least one corner is purposefully pecked. A pair of pecked corner cut-outs are combined to bracket an unaltered stone in the Southeast’s left-hand wall (fi gs. 2e and 4a). The aperture stone, already in situ by the construction of the main chamber (van der Reijden in prep.), is altered to insert the corner of an oblong block (fi g. 4b). The argument could be made this is the easiest manner of insertion, bar simply knocking off the oblong stone’s corner, yet the opposite occurs at the unaltered-stone’s other end where it is the ut additae that is pecked (fi g. 4c). Seeing both ends of the stone simultaneously is thwarted by the chamber’s small size. Hiding in plain sight generates another variation of elusivity.
Figure 2: Side-chamber’s left- and right-hand sidewalls: (a and b) Northwest left-hand chamber; (c and d) Northeast midline chamber; (e and f) Southeast right-hand chamber (photographs by author with permission of Historic Environment Scotland, unless otherwise stated). Figure 3: Singular corner cut-out in the stone on the left, located within right-hand side of the main chamber's right-hand wall, where a natural fi ssure continues the junction of the horizontal and square stones, creating the illusion of three average shaped stones (surface marks are Norse runes).
The left wall of the left-hand Northwest chamber has an example of two corner cut-outs aligned such that one stone could fi ll the paired open space, yet two are used (fi g. 5a). The inversion of this—and using a single fi lling stone—occurs else- where in Orkney, such as in Quoyness’ main chamber (van der Reijden in prep.). In Maeshowe, lower in this wall, a natural corner cut-out on the top edge, utilised by another stone, is positioned into the pecked corner cut-out of the stone below (fi g. 5b). The eye is attracted away from both double corner cut-outs by this last stone’s oddity—it projects from the wall face suspended in space. The left as critical for these side-chambers is also evidenced in the left-hand Northwest being the most impressive, contrary to the Neolithic right-hand norm of “power, maleness, integrity” (O'Sullivan 2009: 20). Its left-hand wall has the only projecting stones: the solitary examples of a pair of vertical stones and a possible ringing stone, one that resonates when struck (Lund 2019: 33). The former's projection creates the only active shadow within Maeshowe creating hillocks aligned with the v-notch of Hoy, itself involved in the mid-winter sunset alignment (MacKie 1997: 348). Duplicating the landscape behind a monument occurs elsewhere in the Neolithic (for Scotland see: Bradley 2000a: 183; Bradley and Watson 2012: 76). The fi nal projecting stone, being the 'odd' stone discussed above (fi gs. 2a and 6a), is both a rare example of dense pink sandstone and has deep plumes not otherwise seen in Orcadian constructions (van der Reijden in prep.). Unlike its duplicate in the opposite right-hand wall (fi g. 2b), it further meets the sonorous criteria of diff use hammer marks (Ouzman 1998: 38) and suspension in space (Devereux and Wozencroft 2014: 60). In review, the three left-hand sidewalls have better masonry and fi ner integrations than right-hand ones. Ranking these walls using negative space as an inverse of fi nesse-of-fi t, the poorest, left-hand wall is still superior to the best, right-hand wall (fi gs. 2a vs. 2b). Thus, an intimate study of “the historicity of construction” (Gianotti et al. 2011: 399) reveals intentional diff erences; presencing complexity as desired (Laporte 2015: 20), which itself is known to be aesthetically pleasing (Leder et al. 2019: 111; Roe 2004: 232). This left-over-right sidedness is in opposition to Herity's (1974: 123) “dexter over sinister” in Irish passage graves which is “refl ected in the size of the right hand [sic] recesses, the motifs, artefacts and human remains” (Cochrane et al. 2015: 875). The right-hand side-chamber of Maeshowe is the largest, yet has the poorest right-hand side-chamber walling (fi g. 2f) and contains no artwork (Thomas 2016: 77-78). Robin (2009: 111, 117) identifi ed diff erences in the distribution of Irish passage grave artwork motifs, certain forms were more prevalent on the left although overall artwork more frequent on the right. However, he found artwork in side- chambers to be weighted toward the front half of passage graves (left in left-hand chambers, right in right-hand ones). Incising in Maeshowe’s two side-chambers
Figure 4: Right-hand side-chamber’s left-hand wall with double corner cut-outs: (a) pair of pecked corner cut- outs are combined to bracket an unaltered stone; detailed by (b) the left-hand, in situ stone that has been pecked to shape, and (c) opposingly the right-hand ut additae that has been pecked to shape (complete wall: fi g. 2e). Figure 5: Left-hand side-chamber showing the Northwest’s left-hand southwest wall with details of the two sets of double corner cut-outs: (a) the upper set, and (b) the lower set (complete wall: fi g. 2a). mostly meet this criterion with the midline Northeast’s examples aligned to the front endwall. However, even though rare, Thomas’ (2016) Figure 41 shows that, for Maeshowe’s side-chambers, incising is constrained to the left of the cairn’s midline (van der Reijden in prep.), and within those two side-chambers domi- nantly on their respective left-hand sides. Moreover and remarkably side-chamber incising occurs on or next to corner cut- outs (fi g. 7). Between the side-chambers there are ten corner cut-outs, of which six are paired, associated with eight instances of incising (the ninth, MH14_34 (Thomas 2016: fi gs. 69 and 72) appears not to be in situ, see van der Reijden in prep.). In total, three motifs are on the corner cut-out stone and four next to it (the exception being incising on the left-chamber’s backslab adjacent to a dam- aged area; Thomas 2016: 69). Thus, there are singular corner cut-outs without associated incising in the side-chambers. Outside the side-chambers the opposite occurs. Each of the four corner cut-out examples located (three in the main chamber, one per side-chambered wall, and one in the passageway) are associated with incising, while the main chamber has many other examples of incising. This distribution shows fewer examples of both incising and pecking in the right half, but these are more complex forms (pers. obs.; compare Thomas 2016: fi gs. 35 and 51). Thus, the above divides incising and
Figure 6: Northwest left-hand side-chamber’s left-hand southwest wall with details of the unique projecting stones: (a) large pink sandstone suspended in space, showing mirrored points of percussion with both right- hand stones, and (b) shadows created by the only pair of vertical stones (complete wall: fi g. 2a). Figure 7: Left-hand side-chamber showing the Northwest’s left-hand southwest wall with outlined incidences of incising (orange; data from Thomas 2016: 69) and corner cut-outs (red), showing one example each of incising on and next these stones (complete wall: fi g. 2a). stone-setting behaviours between Maeshowe’s main and side chambers; there is a distinct distribution inversion of sidedness behaviours. The chaîne opératoire methodology also evidences intentionality and decision- making through another stone-selection behaviour in the Orcadian passage graves: placement of fl uvial stones orientated right-side up or upside down. Fluvial stones are generated by the geological preservation of the process of sediment deposition in watery environments (Newton 1968: 283). In Orkney (Astin 1985: 363), fl uvial stones present in the form of ripple-marks in the cross-lamination of bedding layers (fi g. 8a) or as bedding-face ‘frozen waves’ (fi g. 8b; Tilley 2004: 158). Fewer examples of watery-textured stones were documented for Maeshowe compared to other Orcadian passage graves (van der Reijden in prep.), but each side-chamber has inverted stones. In the Northeast side-chamber (fi gs. 2c and d), the right-hand wall has a stone with an inverted frozen wave along its bottom edge (fi g. 9a). Diagonally opposite is another wave-textured stone, which at fi rst glance appears right-side-up with weak frozen waves across the top (fi g. 9b). However, upon close inspection clear cross-lamination waveforms and their critically-climbing angulation (Hunter 1977: 702) show this stone has actually been placed inverted from its original geological formation. Again, the eye is fooled. Figure 8: Fluvial sedimentary stones found in Neolithic Orcadian passage graves geologically recording water movement: (a) bedding layers with cross-lamination ripple-marks at Wideford, and (b) inverted frozen waves across the bedding surface at the Knowe of Lairo (photographs by author). Thus, there is an additional form of reversal displayed in the side-chambers: inverso over rectus. Watery-textured stones are found inverted only in the side-chambers; all such stones in the main chamber (fi g. 1a) and passageway are upright. It would be naïve to claim this is accidental, equivalent to the primitivist statement that fl ying inverted American fl ags by Native Americans was “a careless error on the part of an otherwise attentive and highly skilled artist” (Logan and Schmittou 2007: 210). These asymmetrical waveforms are simply patent lithifi ed versions of the foreshore. In fact, the active inclusion of ripple-textured stones may intentionally bring into the cairn Helskog’s (1999: 73) and Bradley’s (2000b: 28) suggestion that the foreshore is conceived of as an intersection of this world and the next. This reversal also supports Gaydarska’s (2012: 244) assertion that the usually-ignored directionalities of up/down and right-side up/inverted are informative. The microhistory methodology also makes apparent repeated pairings between each side-chamber’s sidewalls: Northwest’s only and opposing large pink sand- stones, Northeast’s opposing inverted water-textured stones and Southeast’s diagonally opposing stones with unusual projecting lumps (van der Reijden in prep.). Furthermore, the repetitive doubling of features refl ects an avoidance of bilateral symmetry; they are not duplicates nor mirrored images or locations. For example, the top edge of the Northwest’s left-hand pink sandstone has a corner
Figure 9: Fluvial sedimentary stones in the Northeast midline side-chamber: (a) example of an inverted frozen wave in right-hand sidewall (complete wall: fi g. 2d); (b) left-hand sidewall, detail of the geologically inverted cross-laminating ripple-marked stone with slightly frozen wave ripples along the in situ upper surface (complete wall: fi g. 2c). cut-out; the opposite bows convexly. Interestingly, pairing these two outlines has also been documented elsewhere (Cummings et al. 2002: 63). The chaîne opératoire methodology also showcases an asymmetry in the foot- print of Orcadian passage graves, in contrast to the earlier and in continuing contemporaneously Stalled Cairns. For the passage graves, side-chambers are not symmetrically aligned bar the general rule that end chambers are centred on endwalls. Maeshowe’s footprint is a complete mirror-image until the furthest-back, midline side-chamber. Rather than being centred on its aperture, this end chamber is off set by c.400mm (fi g. 1b), thus generating dissymmetry. ‘ ’ - As shown above for the unaltered stone encased by two pecked corner cut-outs, using the chaîne opératoire methodology to stack the decisions made to produce the resultant design allows placement order to be determined within constructional sections (cf. Benjelloun et al. 2018; Laporte et al. 2017). Two lines of evidence combine to indicate that, similar to the local Stalled Cairns (Callander and Grant 1935: 332), backslabs were inserted last. First, both the Northeast and South- east left-hand aperture stones present direct evidence of placement prior to the side-chamber sidewalls, being critical to the main chamber’s construction (van der Reijden in prep.). Second, since sidewalls abut backslabs, they could have been erected between two in situ endwalls. However, both the Northwest and Southeast left-hand wall- stones have mirrored points of percussion to their sides (fi g. 6a), demonstrating excessive lateral forces post-installation. This implicates the sidewalls were in situ with the backslab placed—more accurately, forced—last. That the mirrored points of percussion occur only on the left is, in all probability, due to their precise fi t, lacking any adjustability of shifting into open spaces. Lastly, it also shows the vertical pair projecting out of the left-hand wall of the left-hand chamber was in situ when the backslab was added, otherwise the points of percussion on the stones to their left could not have occurred (fi g. 6a). : Conjoining the methodologies of the chaîne opératoire and microhistory thus shows there are multiple design inversions between Maeshowe’s main and side chambers, necessitating an interpretation. Here, that interpretation is proposed to be that side-chambers exist as inversions of this upright world and that their apertures are actually openings into an inverted Netherworld. Tombs and caves are often compared for their internal darkness (Barnatt and Edmonds 2002: 124), and it seems a universal belief that cracks in cave walls and outcrops are access points into the Netherworld, where the wall face acts as a ‘membrane’ between here and there (Helskog 1999: 88; Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1990: 12; Rozwadowski 2017: 413-414). A similar argument within build- ings has been made for lower-level walls at Ç atalhö yü k, Turkey (Lewis-Williams 2004: 39). In a mortuary context, Grima (2016: 212) has shown how fault planes exposed in the Neolithic rock-cut hypogeum Ħal Safl ieni, Malta, were engaged with to highlight them as such membranes. Applying this to Richards’ (1992: 73) proposal that the backslabs of Orkney's Stalled Cairns act as the fi nal doorway to the afterlife, which therefore lies behind it (Tilley 2008: 159), allows the literal interpretation that the cairn material is the netherworld. Hereby a cavity within the wall would be seen as passing through the wall-face membrane and actually be within the Land of the Dead. This provides a viable interpretation of the inversion behaviours found in Maeshowe’s side-cham- bers. That is, side-chamber apertures are viewed as openings through a membrane separating this world and the next, and the interior space of the side-chambers as physically situated within the Underworld. This is also a possible explanation for Hedge’s (1983: 21) assertion that bones were rolled into the side-chambers of Isbister, Orkney, with the living never entering them. A physically inverted netherworld, rather than a socially (Staeck 1999: 74) or psychologically (Cochrane 2005: 8) inverted one, is pan-Arctic (combining: Anisimov 1963: 165; Hultkrantz 1996: 35; Schuster and Carpenter 1996: 275; Wile 1934: 297), Indo-European (Napolskikh 1992: 12; Öksüz 2017: 77) and Neolithic (Davies and Robb 2004: 149-150; Malone and Stoddart 2009: 376). While Laporte and Tinévez (2004: 231) note the oppositional axial rotation between Breton Late Neolithic houses and tombs, Hong (2015: 187) presents the only located example in the literature of inverted stone designs, documenting carved up-side down wall-hangings inside a Middle Period (tenth-fourteenth centuries AD) Chinese cist. Duality and its diametricity is crucial in the Neolithic (Parker Pearson and Richards 1994: 13), therefore it should not be surprising that within a mortuary construction there would be a space considered of this world and space that was not. In fact, the development in Stalled Cairns of high sillstones in front of the backslab, such as at Midhowe (Callander and Grant 1934: 341), may be an act of enclosing the fi nal location where bodily remains remained. Scarre (2011: 141) makes such a suggestion for a similar feature in the Channel Island passage graves. The migration of this gesture to Maeshowe’s side-chambers grants a doubled assurance for the universal concern that the dead stay in the Land of the Dead (Robb 2013: 445): fi rst, the bodily remains are beyond the membrane of this world, being physically located within the Underworld; second, the spirits associated with those remains are provided a Netherworld-accessing backslab. The success of the chaîne opératoire methodology as a heuristic tool is evidenced here by the multiple novel recordings of design features in Maeshowe. Enacting the method has shown that backslabs are placed last, similar to local Stalled Cairns, and has given evidence toward the importance of symmetry avoidance, perhaps even specifi c asymmetrical pairings. Investigation of the “micro-spatial organi- sation of architectural elements” (Gianotti et al. 2011: 402) makes apparent the reversal of right-hand behaviours inside the side-chambers through documen- tation of corner cut-outs—time-invested construction choices that are associated with incised motifs. Further, it has also shown an inversion of orientable fl uvial sandstones. Constructional evidence for a Neolithic inverted Underworld, as yet little evidenced outside of rock art, supports Gillings’ (2015b: 231) statement that “megalithic inversion…may well have [a] much wider interpretative value”. The elusivity of these architectural features is a diff erent use of hiddenness than ‘hidden in the landscape’ (cf. Gillings 2015a: 2). Elusivity here is not related to visibility but rather illusion, which provides clear evidence of intention. Intention is also seen through purposeful construction choices of investment in additional time for higher quality masonry (cf. Bradley 2000a: 216) and dissymmetrical walls (cf. Laporte 2015: 20). This study’s results provide evidence of genuine intentional variability in stone placement within Neolithic walling, showing these rocks are not treated as undiff erentiated, mundane, inert lumps (Cooney 2009; Jones 2017: 175; Tilley 2004: 152). The chaîne opératoire methodology facilitates going beyond selection, transport and inclusion of a stone’s biography (Kopytoff 1986), to show that placement is as actively entangled (Hodder 2012). These gestures of stone use have become apparent specifi cally by combining the methodologies of the chaîne opératoire and microhistory, making visible social knowledge (Apel 2001) and cultural practices (Strand 2012). Much like the 8000 French spades that had to be replaced in WWI because we did not know how to use them, nor they ours (Mauss 1973[1935]: 71), close analysis reveals these stones were manipulated in ways not culturally familiar to us, but nonetheless were signifi cant.