Located in a bend of the River Boyne in County Meath, Ireland, Brú na Bóinne (“mansion or palace of the Boyne”) is also called the Boyne Valley tombs.
Brú na Bóinne is an ancient monument complex and ritual landscape built during the 32nd century BCE.
The site is dominated by the passage tombs of Dowth (Dubhadh), Knowth (Cnogbha) and Newgrange (Sí an Bhrú).
Brú na Bóinne is one of the world’s most important Neolithic landscapes, and is a UNESCO Wolrd Heritage site. Collectively it consists of at least ninety monuments including passage tombs, burial mounds, standing stones and enclosures. It is the largest assemblage of megalithic art in Europe.
The archaeological culture associated with is called the “Boyne culture,” of which little is known. The Boyne valley has been a center of human settlement for at least 6,000 years. Most of the major structures date from the Neolithic period to around 5,000 years ago.
Predating the Egyptian pyramids, the site is a complex of Neolithic mounds, chamber tombs, standing stones, henges and other prehistoric enclosures. The site covers 780 ha (1,927 acres). Brú na Bóinne is located eight kilometers west of Drogheda in County Meath, Ireland, in a bend of the River Boyne, about 40 kilometers north of Dublin. It contains about 40 passage tombs, as well as other prehistoric sites and features built later.
Brú na Bóinne is also an important archaeoastronomical site. Several of the passage tombs are aligned with the winter solstice and equinoxes. The site’s construction is sophisticated, showing a knowledge of science and astronomy, which is especially evident in the winter solstice-aligned passage grave of Newgrange.
Most of the monuments are on the north side of the river Boyne. Each of main tombs stand on a ridge within the river bend. Dowth, Knowth, and Newgrange may have been built to be visible from each other and from northern and southern approaches along the Boyne.
Two of the tombs, Knowth and Newgrange, appear to contain stones re-used from an earlier monument at the site, there is no evidence for earlier activity at the site, except for a few finds of flint tools from Mesolithic hunters.
Work on the tombs and other features by the original Boyne culture appears to have stopped around 2,900 BCE.
The area was ritual and ceremonial site in the later Bronze Age and Iron Age, long after the Boyne culture that built the tombs had disappeared. The area was used until the early Bronze Age, when a number of embanked, pit and wooden post circles (collectively referred to as “henges”) were built. Artifacts from the later Bronze Age include some cist and ring ditch burials and burnt mounds. From the Iron Age there is only evidence of sporadic activity, such as burials near Knowth and at Rosnaree. Valuable items from the Roman period such as coins and jewelry were found near Newgrange
In Irish mythology, the tombs are considered portals to the Otherworld and the homes of the deities, The Dagda and his son Aengus.
The Brú na Bóinne began was first studied by antiquarians in the 18th century. Archaeological excavations began in the 20th century, when some of the passage tombs – Knowth and Newgrange – underwent restoration.