So, in the Tribunal Temples in Morrowind, in the main room, there is usualy an ashpit on the floor, filled with ash and skeletons.. So I wonder, what it that they burn in these ashpits? People? :P cuz that seems a bit.. rough.. as it is right in the middle of the temple.

I assumed the bodies were burned elsewhere, and their ashes and bones were stored in the pits afterwards.

Words like 'Crematorium' and magica come to mind. Plus there is a city of the dead.

I wish there was more evidence of ancestor worship, or that it was explained more in the game (maybe I missed something?). For instance, do Dunmer perform ceremonies to honor their ancestors? Do they donate more grave goods, food, flowers, incense, or whatnot for their ancestors? My recent National Geographic had an article on some of the customs of ancestor reverence performed in China. It included purchasing and burning paper dolls, tending to the burial plots in the village, and so on, on a certain day each year.

we see offerings and prayer stools next to almost every urn and pit in the tombs, so i think its safe to assume that people come and visit their dead ancestors.

I suspect they do perform ceremonies, considering the skulls on sticks and enchanted objects next to urns in the ancestral tombs. It's not like somebody said "Hey, lets put this skull on a stick and place it in the ashpit in our family's ancestral tomb! That sounds like fun."
They probably have some kind of a ritual which includes all those objects that one usually sees in there. Also, there are usually offerings to be found on the edge of the pits.

I had forgotten about that, you're right. It doesn't seem like the Ancestral tombs are in great shape, though, unless daedra are also bound as guardians (I know the undead - skeletons, bonewalkers - are supposed to be guardians)?

A lot of that has to do with the Tribunal's co-opting of ancestor worship to serve the Great Ghostfence. Ghostfences are powered by whatever stuff souls are made of, and the pressing need to maintain the Great Ghostfence caused the Tribunal to lay claim to the souls of the ancestors and the custom of veneration. Thus the visible disuse, and occupation by marauding Daedra, of the ancestral tombs.

Although the tombs are disused, I wonder how the destruction of Morrowind (or most of Morrowind?) will affect Dunmer beliefs. Will the loss of their ancestral tombs mean they're deracinated now, cut off from their roots? Or have the tombs been neglected long enough that their loss won't be as catastrophic to the race as it would have once been.

I'd like to note that the Ghostfence (or smaller versions of it) are not in fact powered by souls, but by the physical remains of the deceased. http://www.imperial-library.info/mwbooks/ancestor.shtml is clear on this:

It is a family's most solemn duty to make sure their ancestor's remains are interred properly in a City of the Dead such as Necrom. Here the spirits draw comfort from one another against the chill of the mortal world. However, as a sign of great honor and sacrifice, an ancestor may grant that part of his remains be retained to serve as part of a ghost fence protecting the clan's shrine and family precincts. Such an arrangement is often part of the family member's will, that a knucklebone shall be saved out of his remains and incorporated with solemn magic and ceremony into a clan ghost fence. In more exceptional cases, an entire skeleton or even a preserved corpse may be bound into a ghost fence.

These remains become a beacon and focus for ancestral spirits, and for the spirit of the remains in particular. The more remains used to make a ghost fence, the more powerful the fence is. And the most powerful mortals in life have the most powerful remains.

The Great Ghost Fence created by the Tribunal to hold back the Blight incorporates the bones of many heroes of the Temple and of the Houses Indoril and Redoran who dedicated their spirits to the Temple and Clan as their surrogate families. The Ghost Fence also contains bones taken from the Catacombs of Necrom and the many battlefields of Morrowind.

Ashpits could be for the bodies of dead in families too poor to dig out a tomb.

The Dunmer are always going on about burning witches and putting daedra worshipers and necromancers up on a pole. Maybe they have weekly witch burnings, and roast nix hound weenies around the bonfire at the jolly old Temple.

Ty - had forgotten the name of Necrom - actually there are several texts that refer to this in-game. that questio of what the destruction of VV will do to the ancestors is brilliant syronj! Tough one to answer and well worth a book - okies, now who is up for that challenge?