The first diagram shows the Crag (which lies at the heart of the Grove) as it might appear to someone standing in the clearing below the Ancestor House.

This was my original conception derived from the second diagram (which can be seen more fully here). As it came to be used in The Standing Dead, the scale should be perhaps a little larger... but not much. One of the things that I set out to do here was to contrast the modest scale of the Koppie with the monumental excesses of Osrakum.

It should also be noted that I decided to move the cistern from where it is shown on the diagrams. As for the circular structure on the diagram, that has written around its edge "area needed to accommodate Tribe as refugees", I'm afraid I can't at this moment remember what that has to do with anything...

Steps cut into the rock rise up to the Ancestor House and then rise further to the summit. It is here, upon funerary trestles, that the Ochre expose their male dead for sky burial.

The third diagram shows a plan of the Ochre Ancestor House. I visualized its interior as being roughly the same size as the room in which I work. The circles indicate the locations of characters in the scene in which Carnelian and Osidian are brought before the Elders. The red circles show the female Elders and the black, the male. The brown circles are Fern and Loskai. The white circles are Carnelian and Osidian. The thick, wavy line shows the contour of the bone wall.

Each koppie has an Ancestor House which is built somewhere up its crags (so that it is neither in the territory of the Mother nor of the Sky Father). This chamber is completely lined with a mosaic of the skeletal remains of a tribes' dead. The floor is covered with the pelvic bones and the lower walls with the skulls of dead women. The ceiling is covered with the arm and leg bones and the upper walls by the skulls of dead men. Between them is a freize composed entirely of the skulls of children.

The bones that line it produce a screen that intensifies an Ancestor HouseŐs connection with earth and sky. Women walk barefoot on this but have their heads covered. Men walk shod until they reach their chairs. These are built on a base of childrenŐs skulls and the seat is of menŐs bones which reaches up to touch the ceiling by means of a long back.