well as defleshing of the body before the cremation. Once the houses had served their purpose, they were burned to the ground and covered by earth, creating a sort of burial mound. Anthropologist William F. Romain in Mysteries of the Hopewell notes that these charnel houses were built in the form of a square, and their diagonals could be aligned to the direction of maximum and minimum moon-sets both north and south. England Charnel houses do not appear to have been common in England. The earliest reference found to a charnel house was in the parish of St Mary-at-Hill in London, during the sixteenth century. Few other charnel houses are attested in the seventeenth century, usually within overcrowded urban contexts. See also Mortuary house Ossuary References Sources Papaioannou, Evangelos (1980) The Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai, St. Catherine's Monastery: Guidebook, 48 pp., Cairo: Isis Press. External links Burial monuments and structures Native American religion