Mortuary enclosures and houses

A mortuary enclosure is a structure made of earth, stone or wood and used for the storage of bodies prior to their collective burial. Remains of such enclosures are sometimes found under barrows. Mortuary enclosures can also be confused with short cursuses. The possible cursuses near Cheddington and Ivinghoe Beacon hillforts could be mortuary enclosures.

A mortuary house is a wooden or stone copy of an actual dwelling, buried under a barrow and used as a tomb for the dead. There is sometimes an overlap between the definitions of a mortuary house and a mortuary enclosure but very different ritual ideas may be involved. A mortuary house often contains only a single corpse, and serves primarily as a sepulchre rather than as a charnel house in which bodies were accumulated. A mortuary house was excavated under Whiteleaf Neolithic barrow.