Monday, March 21, 2011

Something That Has Been Bugging Me

How come whenever someone is mapping catacombs or crypts or some other burial place filled with undead they always look like this:


The hell is that shape supposed to represent?  Where does it come from?  I should note that I do it, but I'm not sure why or from whence it came.  Enlighten me.

9 comments:

  1. Hah! I guess that's one of those D&Disms that has been around for so long that nobody questions it anymore.

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  2. I do it as well. I'm not quite sure where it originated from in a mapping sense, but for me, it represents the realities of a crypt or catacomb. Living in Italy, there are tons of crypts and catacombs. They are usually halls or tunnels with niches set of and either a sarcophagus in the niche or in the wall of the niches are cells that have bodies in them. Here's the type with the cells in the wall: http://www.italianvisits.com/images/lroma-im/rome-im_monuments/rome-monument_catacombs.jpg. Here's an example of the other: http://ceciriehl.com/Gallery/albums/Paris/crypt_w_flash.sized.jpg. Anyway, that is usually what I have in mind when I map these out.

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  3. I believe that the alcoves would be layered in at least 3, perhaps up to 5 niches containing coffins or corpses. That shape is pretty space-saving and work-efficient.

    Here's a link for pic of what I mean with the niches.

    http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_commissions/archeo/inglese/documents/rc_com_archeo_doc_20011010_cataccrist_en.html

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  4. Alcoves and niches! Technically, in a catacomb, they are usually "shelves" cut into the stone walls, about five foot long and three deep, where they lay the bones of the dead, but we're all too lazy to create properly-scaled burial niches and don't want to indicate that there's two or three shelves in a particular section of wall. So instead, we assume that the dead are stuffed, maybe in both senses of the term, in a standing position, into 10x10 cubby-holes. You know; so that if any of them are actually undead, they can reach out from the shadows.

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  5. Hah, we all cross-posted essentially the same answer.

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  6. Given the low resoloution of the mapping technique (trying to constrain most shapes to whole-squares), I always thought it was a pretty fair representation of the niches/alcoves in catacombs. See the scene in the catacombs under the library in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for a pretty good visual example, noting of course that most of the niches are long filled with bones.

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  7. Have a look at the layouts of ancient burial mounds too. As the others have noted, niches and alcoves crop up often in burial places, and this is a fairly decent visual shorthand for such construction.

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  8. I always thought the shelves just went the length of the hall rather than at regularly (or irregularly) spaced intervals. That's how I always describe it anyway.

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  9. This is what I picture when I see that shape on map: http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_commissions/archeo/images/ossuna_big.jpg
    and
    http://cache.virtualtourist.com/1919085-catacombs-Rabat.jpg

    The squares that stick out are alcoves built into the walls for remains to be piled into, while the squares that are on the inside are the wall itself, left in place to support the weight of the ceiling and keep the whole place from caving in.

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