The passage tomb at Newgrange is Ireland’s most famous megalithic monument.
Newgrange, located on hillside overlooking the River Boyne, 8 kilometers (5.0 mi) west of Drogheda, is a passage tomb built during the Neolithic Period, around 3200 BC. It is older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids.
Newgrange is the main monument in the Brú na Bóinne complex, a World Heritage Site that includes the nearby passage tombs of Knowth and Dowth, as well as other henges, burial mounds and standing stones.
Newgrange consists of a large circular mound with an inner stone passageway that leads to a cruciform chamber. Burnt and unburnt human bones, and possible grave goods or votive offerings, were found in this chamber.
The mound has a retaining wall at the front, made mostly of white quartz cobblestones. It is encircled by kerbstones, with many of the stones engraved in megalithic art. The mound is also ringed by a stone circle.
Some of the material that makes up the monument came from as far as the Mournes and Wicklow Mountains.
There is no agreement about the Newgrange tomb’s purpose, but it is believed it had religious significance.
It is aligned on the winter solstice sunrise so that the rising sun shines through a ‘roofbox’ above the entrance and floods the inner chamber with sunlight.
The engineering and construction of the roofbox and tomb indicates a highly sophisticated ancient culture existed in Boyne River valley.
Archeologists disagree about the construction of the Newgrange tomb.
Irish geologist and naturalist Frank Mitchell, who studied Newgrange, suggested that it could have been built in as little as five years. His estimate was based on the likely number of local inhabitants during the Neolithic age and the amount of time they could have devoted to building it rather than farming.
Mitchell’s estimate, however, was challenged by archeologist Michael J. O’Kelly and his archaeological team, who believed that it would have taken a minimum of thirty years to build.
DNA analysis revealed that bones found in the most chamber belonged to a man whose parents were first-degree relatives, possibly brother and sister. Such inbreeding was usually only found in royal dynasties headed by ‘god-kings’, such as the pharaohs of ancient Egypt, who married among themselves to keep the royal bloodline ‘pure’. The man was distantly related to people buried in the Carrowkeel and Carrowmore tombs.
This, together with the prestige of the burial, could mean that an elite group was responsible for building Newgrange.
The largely unknown Boyne valley culture used the site for about 1,000 years. The site then feel into ruins but area remained in use by the Beaker Culture, another group that replaced the culture that built the passage tomb, into the Bronze Age.
During the Bronze Age large timber circle (or henge) was constructed to the southeast of the main mound and a smaller timber circle to the west.
Newgrange evidently continued to have some ritual significance into the Iron Age. Some of the objects deposited around the mound include two pendants made from gold Roman coins of 320–337 and Roman-era gold jewelry including two bracelets, two finger rings, and a necklace. These Roman finds are interesting since the Romans did not occupy Ireland as they did Brittan and never had a long-term presence in Ireland.
Drombeg stone circle (also known as The Druid’s Altar), is one of Ireland’s most-visited megalithic sites. It is a protected Irish National Monument.
Chapters: 00:00 Intro 00:49 3-D View of recumbent stone. 02:46 E.M. Fahy’s schematic drawing of Drombeg excavation 04:42 fulacht fiadh
Drombeg is a small axial stone circle located 2.4 km (1.5 mi) east of Glandore, County Cork, Ireland.
The name Drombeg means small ridge.
The site is strategically situated in atop a small valley with an expansive view of the surrounding area. It overlooks a gentle slope that extends down to the Atlantic ocean to the west.
Archeologist E.M. Fahy excavated and restored Drombeg in 1957-58. Drombeg originally had 17 stones and 13 remain today. The circle is about 9 meters, 31 feet, in diameter.
Fahy replaced two stones during the restoration in the late 1950s. He also removed an area of gravel from the center of the circle and made a startling discovery.
Fahy discovered an inverted pot in the center of the circle containing the cremated remains of an adolescent wrapped with thick cloth.
Near the pot were smashed pottery sherds and sweepings from a pyre. Radiocarbon dating of samples taken from Drombeg revealed it was active c. 1100–800 BCE.
Several surveys of the site were made in the early 20th century and a journal article from 1903 indicated there may have once been a standing stone at the center of the circle, according to the website voicesfromthedawn.com https://voicesfromthedawn.com/drombeg….
Drombeg’s alternate name, the Druid’s Altar, may have originated from local stories the recumbent stone was a sacrificial altar and the circle was built by Druids.
Reputed to be a sacrificial altar, the recumbent stone is darker than the other stones in the circle. It is directly opposite two stones, each more than two meters (7 ft) tall, that appear to frame a ceremonial entrance portal.
The recumbent stone has two cup-marks and what has been interpreted as a depiction of either a stone axe or a human foot.
Although the discovery of the cremated remains lends some credence to the idea that the site may have involved some form of human sacrifice.
However, the circle predates and the radiocarbon dates for the human remains predate the Druids. A guidebook written in the 1990s also invented a narrative for the Drombeg which may have also helped reinforce the idea the site was associated with human sacrifice even though the exact nature of how and why the remains were buried in the circle is unknown.
The Drombeg site also includes another Bronze Age feature, a fulacht fiadh and the remains of two associated stone and wood huts. A fulacht fiadh is a kind of pit that was used for boiling water by means of heated stones.
Excavation by Fahy in 1959 uncovered the foundations of two conjoined circular huts. The huts, one of which was used as a hearth for heating rocks, are linked by a 9 m (30 ft) stone causeway to the fulacht fiadh.
Water in a trough was boiled by dropping in red-hot stones from the adjacent hearth. Evidence form the site suggests the fulacht fiadh was in use until 5th century AD.
The fulacht fiadh at Drombeg is often referred to as a communal cooking pit. The term, fulacht fiadh, has been treanslated by some scholar to mean “cooking place” of deer or game. However, no direct evidence of food or cooking food has been found at the site. A number of alternate uses for the boiling pit have also been suggested ranging from a sweat lodge to being used to prepare hides to make leather to boiling wool.
When Fahy excavated the fulacht fiadh he reportedly conducted experiments demonstrating that he could heat the 265 liters (70 gallons) of water in the trough by adding stones baked three hours in a hearth. The water boiled vigorously after 18 minutes and was hot two hours later.
Sources: Fahy, E.M. (1959). “A Recumbent-stone Circle at Drombeg, Co. Cork”. Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society. 2. LXIV: 1–27. Fahy, E.M. “A Hut and Cooking Places at Drombeg, Co. Cork.” Journal of the Cork Historical and Archaeological Society 65 (January-June, 1960): 9-10. Keogh, Jackie (4 January 2017). “New discoveries about Drombeg Stone Circle”. Southern Star. Retrieved 6 January 2017.
Ireland’s distant past speaks to the present at Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery.
Located on the Cúil Irra Peninsula on Co. Slio, Ireland, Carrowmore is the oldest and largest group of megalithic tombs in Ireland. It is also one of Europe’s largest megalithic cemeteries.
Thanks to extensive archeology, historic documentation, advanced scientific analysis and recent preservation efforts, Carrowmore provides a window into who the Irish of 3500 BCE were and what they were up to.
Carrowmore is set within a spectacular megalithic landscape dominated by the mountain of Knocknarea to the west. On Knocknarea’s summit is one of Ireland’s largest cairns, known as Queen Maeve’s Cairn.
There are bout 50 megalithic tombs on the Cúil Irra peninsula. Most of these, 30 tombs, are at Carrowmore.
Carrowmore’s tombs were built from 3500 BCE to 2900 BCE, during the Neolithic, New Stone Age, according to radio carbon dating results. It’s likely people who built the tombs were Ireland’s first farmers.
Carrowmore is one of Ireland’s ‘big four’ megalithic clusters along with nearby Carrowkeel in Co. Sligo and Loughcrew and Brú na Bóinne in Co. Meath.
Archaeologists consider Carrowmore – like Newgrange, Loughcrew and Carrowkeel – part of the Irish Passage Tomb Tradition.
There may have once been as many as 100 megalithic monuments in the Carrowmore area. Many of the tombs were destroyed or damaged during the during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries by quarrying, field clearance and by antiquarians hunting for ancient treasures.
A number of monuments are located on private property adjacent to the public National Monument.
Today Carrowmore is a protected Irish National Monument and is maintained by the Office of Public Works.
Extensive Research
Although many of the monuments have been disturbed, Carrowmore has been the subject of extensive research.
Pioneering photographers, such as W.A. Green and R.J. Welch of the Belfast Photographer’s club, photographed Carrowmore at the turn of the twentieth century.
Local landlord Rodger Walker conducted unrecorded antiquarian excavations in the 19th century. These digs were essentially treasure hunts to augment Walker’s antiquities collection. Walker kept poor records of his activities. Some of the Walker’s finds are now at Alnwick castle in Northumberland, England.
The Carrowmore monuments were mapped and numbered by Irish archeologist George Petrie in 1837 during the first mapping of Ireland conducted by the British Ordinance Survey. Petrie’s number system identifies the monuments today.
Extensive excavations led by Swedish archaeologist Göran Burenhult were conducted from 1977–1982 and 1994–1998 and 10 tombs were fully or partially excavated. Listoghil, Tomb 51, was excavated in 1996-1998.
At least two sets of archeologists have conducted extensive research on Carrowmore’s age using radio carbon dating and studies of nearby lake sediments. Carrowmore’s monuments were found to span the era from 3750 BCE to 3000 BCE and the builders were farmers.
Multimillenia-old human remains found at Carrowmore have been able to tell their story thanks to DNA analysis.
Intimate connections between occupants of other Irish passage tombs have been revealed by DNA derived from human bones found at Carrowmore. A detectable kin relationship was found between a male buried in Listoghil, Carrowmore’s Tomb 51, and three other males buried in Newgrange, Millin Bay and Carrowkeel.
This DNA relationship points to the existence of a sophisticated interrelated hereditary elite that could inspire the creation of increasingly large and complex tombs and ritual sites across a wide portion of Ireland. In a time before Stonehenge or the Egyptian pyramids, an Irish farming-based society without cities managed to use stone, bone and wooden tools to build religious monuments that have defied destruction and still retain their place in the landscape.
Modern scientific analysis of ancient genetics proves the ancestor of the people who built Ireland’s megalithic monuments originated in Anatolia, in what is now Turkey.[12]
Carrowlmore is the megalithic site keeps on giving for archeologists doing the digging.
The Sligo team conducted geophysical surveys at the Carrowmore megalithic complex, finding a circular structure that was away from where tombs have beeb found. The feature was thought to be a barrow, a circular earthen monument surrounded by a ditch.
Once the team put trowels to the soil something unexpected emerged.
IT Sligo Excavation at Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery, May-June 2019
“Our survey revealed several features that were not visible above ground,” Bonsall said in an article in the publication Archeology. “We discovered that the ‘barrow’ contained a central pit and a substantial circular ditch.”
A sunken area within the layer of stone contained black, charcoal-rich soil, Dowd said in Arecheology.
“So far, we cannot find any parallel for it in Ireland,” Dowd said.
Listoghil or Tomb 51 – Carrowmore’s Focal Point
Listoghil or Tomb 51
Listoghil was built circa. 3500 BCE and is 34 metres in diameter. It the only cain at Carrowmore.
It has a distinctive box-like inner chamber.
The front edge of the entrance covering stone has marks that may be the only megalithic art at Carrowmore.
Three large boulders were found beside the central chamber. Under the cairn may be the remains of a destroyed passage or of a megalithic construction that predates the cairn.
Many of the satellite tombs face the central area. Tomb 51’s location appears to have been the cemetery’s focal point.
Unburned bones as well as cremations has been found in Listophil.
The alignment of Listoghil points at a low saddle-like formation 6.5 km to the east-southeast in the Ballygawley Mountains. The alignment coincides with sunrise at the start and the end of winter, important seasonal festivals in the Gaelic calendar.
Satellite tombs
Corrowmore’s monuments originally consisted of a central dolmen-like megalith with five upright orthostat stones with roughly conical capstones on top enclosing a small pentagonal burial chamber. These tombs were each enclosed by a boulder circle 12 to 15 metres in diameter.
The boulder circles contain 30 to 40 boulders. The stone monuments are usually made with gneiss, the stone material of choice for the tombs. Some tombs have a second, inner boulder circle.
Tomb 3
Entrance stones (or passage stones, crude double rows of standing stones) extend from the central feature, showing the intended orientation of the dolmens. The monuments generally face towards the area of Tomb 51, the central cairn. Four monuments are in pairs.
Each monument was built on a small level platform of earth and stone. Stone packing surrounding the base of the upright stones that locks them in place is one of the secrets of the dolmens’ longevity.
Irish folklore dates Carrowmore’s tombs to Ireland’s mythology and the Battle of Magh Tuireadh, where the Firbolgs were defeated by the Tuatha De Danann.
Carrowmore’s ritual landscape may have taken on new meaning long after the original builders of the monuments were long gone. Archeological evidence suggests tombs that during the later Bronze and Iron Ages some tombs rebuilt and reused.
What to know if you visit Carrowmore:
Admission is 5 euro.
Open May to September 10:00 to 5:00
There’s parking lot on the south side of the road adjacent to the visitor’s center. Parking is free.
It’s worth spending a few minutes in the small museum in the visitor’s center, especially if you are visiting the site with young people.
Allow at least an hour to explore. The views of the surrounding area alone are work the walk around the site.
A two-sided, laminated map and guide to the site is available at the front desk of the visitor’s center for a REFUNDABLE 2 euro. Get the map. You’ll be glad you did.
