Irish Megalithic Tombs

There are four main types or classifications of megalithic burial chamber or tomb to be found in Ireland. The boundaries between these classifications frequently blur and overlap, and in the past many different terms were used to describe monuments. The four main kinds of Irish megalithic monument are Court Tombs, Passage-graves, Portal Tombs and Wedge Tombs. A fifth much smaller class are the neolithic cist burials called Linkardstown Cists, the best studied example being Poulawack.

The Advent of Ancient DNA has provided vast amounts of new information about the builders of the monuments and the people buried within them. The famous Poulnabrone dolmen, a short distance north of Poulawack has been excavated and the human remains analysed. It was found that none of the thirty or so individuals buried here over a six-hundred year span, were related to each other.

Studies on passage-grave burials have discovered relationships bewteen people buried at Carrowmore, Carrowkeel, Millin Bay and a man buried in Newgrange. New studies in Sweden have shown that a proportion of the people buried in passage-graves had died from an early form of bubonic plague, and it is likely that their bodies were placed in these chambers to isolate them from the public.

Passage-graves

The best known of the Irish monuments are the passage-graves, of which there are perhaps 300 - 500 examples on the Island, counting unopened or unclassified cairns. One of the oldest accounts of a megalithic chamber is the description of Newgrange by Edward Lhwyd dating from 1699. There is a long and fascinating history of antiquarian research into megalithic monuments, which have always exerted a powerful attraction to later people. Antiquarian writers and artists, usually members of the colonising elite after the Tudor reconquest, explored illustrated and excavated ancient monuments, and published accounts of their activities.

The different forms of megalithic tombs in Ireland were built by the colonising cattle farmers, the passage-grave people probably originating in the Carnac area of Brittany, and also from the Paris Basin, where similar but much older monuments are found. These farmers had originated in Anatolia or ancient Turkey, where some vastly ancient megalithic monuments such as Göbeklitepe, in the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea. Ancient DNA tells us that these people migrated by boat into western Europe bringing livestock and cereals, and a new form of religion, in their ships.

The passage-grave people began arriving in large numbers on the coasts around Sligo, where an enormous amount of monuments are found and two mythological battles were fought for ownership of Ireland. The early passage-graves at Carrowmore were believed to have been the graves of the Firbolg warriors killed in the First Battle of Moytura. This battle was fought at Beltra to the south of Knocknarea. The Second Battle of Moytura a few generations later was fought about twenty-five kilometers inland on the shores of Lough Arrow.

An extremely early causewayed enclosure appeared at Magheraboy by around 4,000 BC is found between the neolithc passage-graves at Carns Hill and the Carrowmore passage-grave complex in County Sligo.

Notable clusters of these monuments are often found in complexes arranged carefully in the landscape. Notable complexes are found at Carrowmore and Carrowkeel in County Sligo, along with Loughcrew and the enormous monuments, Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth in the Boyne Valley in County Meath. Examples of astronomically aligned monuments can be found at each of the four great passage-grave complexes with current research showing that the neolithic farmers were well advanced in practical cultural astronomy when they arrived here. The roofbox type structure at Cairn G in Carrowkeel is some 300 years older than the more famous and contraversially reconstructed example at Newgrange. Ancient DNA studies have connected burials from Newgrange with burials in both Carrowkeel and Carrowmore.

Court Tombs

The most common type of Irish neolithic monument, almost always found in the northern half of the country, are called court tombs, - court cairns, chambered tombs, stalled tombs or Giant's Grave's. About 400 court tombs survive in Ireland, usually in poor condition with stones and cairns having been recycled into field walls. The twelve largest and most impressive examples are found around Donegal Bay, with notable examples in North Mayo around the Ceide Fields and Rathlackan, Deerpark and Creevykeel in County Sligo, and Shawly, Cloghanmore and Glencolumbkille in County Donegal.

Court tombs come in many different shapes and sizes, and some monuments which have been used as quarries are quite ruined. The twelve largest and most complex of the great central court tombs, of which Creevykeel is the best example, are all found in the northwest around Donegal Bay. There is also a large concentration of slightly simpler dual and single court tombs or gallery graves, in the mid-north and northeast of Ireland.

The study of archaeology on both sides of the modern border, long linked to nationalistic causes, led to a dispute over the origins of the court-tomb builders, with Welsh archaeologist Estyn Evans claiming that the historical province of Ulster had been settled in prehistoric times by colonists from west Scotland, where a similar kind of monument, the horned Clyde cairn are found. Meanwhile Irish archaeologist Ruaidhrí De Valera, sone of Éamon De Valera, was claiming that the court tomb builders arrived from the continent to settle in the Killala are of north Mayo, where a dense cluster of some thirty court tombs are found, many,such as Behy and Rathlackan, are well preserved under bogland. in the southern half of the country—all but five examples are found in the northern portion of the island.

More information on the dedicated Court Tomb page.

Portal Tombs

The third main type of monument foung in Ireland is the Portal dolmens ( portal tombs, Giant's Griddle's or cromleacs ), swith ome 190 examples known. These are probably the most characteristic and well-known kind of stone age monument, and Ireland's most famous example, Poulnabrone in County Clare, has been used for many years as a tourism and marketing device.

Dolmens may well be markers for boundaries for tribal lands or territory. They are frequently found in shallow valleys close to a water source, and the view from the monument does not always seem too important. Dolmens are well known for their large imposing capstones: Irish portal dolmens range in weight from about 10 ton boulders at the Carrowmore passage-tomb complex to the estimated 150 ton at capstone at Brownshill in Co Carlow. Some of Ireland's largest dolmens are found in and around County Dublin, though many fine examples are somewhat collapsed.

More information on the dedicated Portal Dolmens page.

Wedge Tombs

Passage-graves are the main type of neolithic monument featured on this website: they were the first to attract my attention, mainly due to their fabulous art and astronomical alignments. While in secondary school in the mid 1980's, an art teacher encouraged us to study Newgrange and to learn to draw the megalithic art from memory. These fascinating passage-grave structures are found in most European countries with large and well preserved concentrations in France and Ireland. I am lucky to have lived for a decade at Carrowkeel in County Sligo, one of the four major Irish passage-grave complexes. My time spent on the mountain allowed me to become intimately familiar with the monuments of south Sligo. Since then I have worked as a tour guide at the great early passage-grave complex at Carrowmore, also in County Sligo.

The ridge of Moytura on the east shore of Lough Arrow from Carrowkeel is a wonderful place to see excellent examples of the four types of Irish megalithic monument. Heapstown and Shee Lugh are a pair of passage-graves. Heapstown, an absolutely massive cairn (top of page) has not been excavated in modern times and has many features in common with Newgrange. Shee Lugh is a much smaller monument which was dug into in the 1870's, and while the monument is quite ruined, the views from this location are some of the finest in County Sligo. The enormous Labby Rock is one of the largest dolmens in Ireland; there are a number of later bronze age wedge tombs around the ridge. The many tall erratic boulders and standing stones give the site its name - The Plain of the Pillar Stones.

There are similarities and differences between the main types of megalithic monuments, and each has its own sub-classes and regional features. Court tombs and portal dolmens were thought to be the oldest types, and the Poulnabrone portal dolmen in County Clare us Currently Ireland's oldest megalithic tomb, dated from human remains to about 3,800 BC, followed by the early passage graves at Carrowmore, in use from 3,700 BC onwards.

There is a huge amount of variety to the 1,600 or so megaliths remaining in Ireland. Some are huge like the Boyne Valley cairns, some are tiny like the circles in Carrowmore. Many have been destroyed where they made convienient building materials or stood on good farming land. Others are so ruined that there is little left to see of the monument, but the landscape settings are often quite dramatic and informative. Some monuments, such as the Labby Rock, Abbeyquarter, Deerpark and Creevykeel in County Sligo in great condition and are both free and easy to visit.

Artificial caves

Megalithic chambers are really artificial caves, originally built as free-standing structures from large slabs of stone, and some of the earliest megaliths in County Sligo are found close to caves. The thirty-five or so early passage-graves in Carrowmore are constructed on a plateau four kilometers east of Knocknarea, a prominent limestone mountain with twenty-eight caves.

Some of those caves contained fragments of neolithic human remains while William Gregory Wood-Martin found pieces of broken limestone stalactites in his excavations at Circle 49 in Carrowmore. It is possible that bodies were left in the caves to decompose before the bones were removed, perhaps for burial, or cremation and then burial in a megalithic chamber.

The earlier free-standing form of megalithic chamber developed and became larger, allowing reuse of the monument for repeated communal burials over generations. These new, larger chambers were covered by a cairn of stones, which both stabilises the internal structure, defines the monument visually from a distance, and creates a viewing platform which can be used to survey the horizon. While low cairns have been found at several portal dolmens, including Poulnabrone, Fenagh and Dromanone, it has long been suggested that the large capstones were purposefully left free of the cairn to retain their visibility so that all might marvel at their impossible feats of balance.

Some monuments have external features such as standing stones, stone settings, raised banks or stone boxes known as cists. Several of the small, open-air monuments at Carrowmore were surrounded by inner rings and some had cists, stone chests filled with cremated human remains. Two monuments, Cairn F at Carrowkeel and Cairn L at Loughcrew have standing stones within the chambers. At Newgrange and Knowth various standing stones and stone settings are found outside the entrances. At Knowth, the large quantities of quartz, granite and exotic stones were left on the ground where they were found. The quartz found on the ground at Newgrange was interpreted as a fallen wall, which has been contraversially restored using a reinforced concrete wall to hold up the quartz.

Neolithic art

Neolithic art is almost always found on passage-graves, in particular on the monuments at Loughcrew and in the Boyne Valley in County Meath. On the older continential passage-graves, the megalithc art is confined to the inside of the monuments, and never on the exterior of the monuments. While two kerbstones at Loughcrew are engraved, the kerbstones at Dowth, Newgrange and particularly Knowth have lavishly engraved kerbstones, an Irish innovation, where the art is arranged to be viewed externally by the public, unlike the more secretive hidden internal art.

Passage-graves are also kind of megalithic monuments most likely to demonstrate an interest in alignments to specific rising and setting positions of the sun and moon, and they are often constructed in places with incredible panoramas. Views, were not important in the location of courts, while they were of utmost importance in the siting of passage graves. Passage-graves demonstrate a great interest in astronomy: chambers are often oriented to the sun, moon, another heavenly body, or another monument or a landscape feature.

Burials in Megalithic Tombs

There are many different ideas and opinions as to why megalithic monuments were raised by ancient people, many often much larger than needed for burials. All early accounts describe bones and human remains being found in the chambers; the primary use of megalithic chambers was as tombs, places where the bones of the ancestors were laid to rest. However, the numbers don't seem to add up, the amount of burials can be quite small in comparison to the amount of labour that went into erecting large monuments. Some of the smaller chambers at Carrowmore, far to confined for a living person to enter, held as many as fifty cremated bodies.

In some sites, for example Creevykeel in County Sligo, no bones or cremations were found at all. This may be because of the acidic nature of the local soil, which results in poor bone survival. Hugh O'Neill Hencken, excavator at Creevykeel in 1935, found fragmentary cremated remains which he was not sure were from human or animal remains. This, the only excavation at Creevykeel, is frequently reported as the remains of four people.

In other larger and more complex monuments such as Newgrange, the partial remains of some five neolithic people were found. Ancient DNA studies have demonstrated that a man buried in Newgrange was descended from people buried in Carrowmore and Carrowkeel, and that his parents were brother and sister. In nearby Knowth east at least 190 people, both cremated and unburnt, were found in the right-hand recess. At Tara, the relatively small passage-grave known as the Mound of the Hostages had over 300 burials from the neolithic and the bronze age. At Carrowkeel, the remains of about thirty-two people came from the chambers of seven monuments.