A chamber tomb is a place for multiple burials used in many different cultures. Built from stone or sometimes wood, the chambers served as places for storage of the dead and were often used over long periods. There are numerous terms for them depending on the period, design and region in question. Most were built from large stones or megaliths and covered by cairns or barrows but the term is also applied to tombs cut directly into rock and wooden_chambered tombs covered with earth barrows.

In Europe they are known by the generic term of megalithic tombs. They are often distinguished by the layout of their chambers and entrances or the shape and material of the structure that covered them, either an earth barrow or stone cairn. A wide variety of local types has been identified, and some designs appear to have influenced others.

Some types and examples are:

General terms:

• Chambered cairns
• Chambered long barrows
• cromlechs and dolmens
• Corbelled tombs
• chamber tumulus

• Gallery graves including:
  • Allées couvertes
  • Court cairns
  • Giants' graves
  • Navetas
  • the Peak District tomb group
  • Severn-Cotswold or Cotswold-Severn tombs
  • Transepted gallery graves
  • Wedge-shaped gallery graves

• Entrance graves such as
  • Portal dolmens
  • Scillonian entrance graves

• Passage graves including:
  • The tholos tombs of Mycenaean Greece.
  • V-shaped passage graves
  • Cruciform passage graves
  • Clava cairns

• Other types:
  • Domus de Janas
  • Dysser
  • Hunebeds
  • Medway tombs
  • Shaft and chamber tombs