Some are the size of small towns. They might, and often did, contain meeting houses, craft workshops and charnel houses for the processing of human remains, along with crypts for the dead. A few might have had resident caretakers, though this isn’t entirely clear. What is clear is that for most of the year these sites remained largely or completely empty. Only on specific ritual occasions did they come to life as theatres for elaborate ceremonies, densely populated for a week or two at a time, with people drawn from across the region and occasional visitors from very far away.
