Poulawack cairn, dramatically located on a commanding hilltop in the heart of the Burren.
Poulawack cairn
The Poulawack Cairn was excavated between June 22nd and July 10th in 1934 by the Third Harvard
Archaeological Mission in Ireland. The Harvard Mission, which was led by Hugh O'Neill Hencken, excavated a total of fifteen Irish monuments including the great court cairn at Creevykeel in the mid 1930's and these were the first scientific excavations to take place in Ireland. The cairn at Poulawack proved to be a very interesting and unusual monument, and modern archaeologists have dated some of the human remains and also conducted genetic research on the bones found within the cists.
A plan of the three phases of construction at Poulawack cairn from the 1934 excavations.
The Poulawack monument is a round cairn of quarried limestone measuring twenty-one meters
in diameter and 2.5 meters high. The cairn is located on a slight rise just west of Carran village, right in the heart of the Burren, and is highly visible from the surrounding landscape. It may be at the centre of a complex of ritual monuments stretching from Ireland's best known dolmen at Poulnabrone to the north to the dolmen at Killinaboy to the south.
Excavations in 1934
The Harvard Mission excavation at Poulawack lasted for three weeks. The Harvard archaeologists and fifteen local workmen removed the cairn completely, which was how excavations were conducted at that time. Modern excavations only examine a portion of a site, leaving unexcavated portions for future research with improved techniques. The cairn was found to have been built in a number of phases and contained ten internal cists or burial chambers.
Before excavation the cairn appeared as a stony mound partly grass-grown and shaped like an inverted bowl. Apart from a few small superficial irregularities, it was undisturbed except on the northwest side, where, unlike the rest of the mound, the surface was littered with small stones, and when these were removed, the solid undisturbed body of the cairn was seen to be somewhat lower than elsewhere.
Poulawack Cairn in the heart of the Burren. This monument was initially thought to date to the Bronze age, but has since been recalibrated to 3,300 BC, firmly in the neolithic.
Hencken believed the cairn dated to the bronze age; at the time, before the carbon dating revolution, most megalithic monuments were thought of as being younger than the neolithic. Hencken discovered a total of sixteen burials placed in a series of ten cists within the cairn, including a central cist built of inwardly leaning slabs. This inner cist has been classed as a Linkardstown
Cist, a relatively new type of monument to Irish archaeology, and which were not known in Hencken's time.
When the cairn had been completely removed, it was re-erected as nearly as possible in its former shape. Although the mound yielded comparatively little in the way of finds, it proved to be a very elaborate structure, and for that reason a full description of what the excavation revealed is given here.
The sequence of enlargement at extensions at Poulawack Cairn.
The original structure was named Grave 8, a burial cist which was divided into two compartments. This structure which contained four disarticulated burials was built on the old ground level. The cist was enclosed within a cairn about ten meters in diameter and two meters high, with a drystone revetment around the perimeter. After a period of as much as 1000 years, three more Graves, numbered 4, 5 and 6 were inserted into the monument. This reuse for burial seems to have taken place over a few generations around 2,000 BC. The third phase of use saw the cairn enlarged and extended with several more burials inserted into the ancient monument:
Phase 3: The enlargement of the cairn and its use as a cemetery for
protected burials. During this phase the cairn was substantially
enlarged. It was extended by c 2 metres around its circumference
and enclosed by a flagstone kerb, averaging 1 metre in height. It
was also heightened by an additional metre. The extended cairn
covered a protected crouched inhumation placed on the old
ground surface immediately outside the primary revetment. Two
irregular cists were constructed close to the summit of the primary
cairn and covered while a fourth grave may also be included in this
group on the basis of the irregular nature of its protective covering.
This burial, grave 7, was inserted into the primary cairn.
It is possible that all four burials took place over a relatively short
period of time and were associated with the reconstruction of the
mound, although it is also possible to suggest that the burials took
place in pairs, Grave 7 before the cairn was heightened, Grave 1
following and immediately being covered by the enlargement of
the cairn and Grave 2 preceding Grave 3, both being insertions in
the enlarged cairn. The reconstruction and burials could all have occurred during a
short period either 1610-1554 cal BC or 1486-1452 cal BC or have
been divided over the two.
Poulawack cairn photographed during the 1934 excavation by the Harvard Archaeological Mission.
The Internal Cists
The burials have been re-calibrated in a modern archaeological study, which showed that the initial phases of the monument date from about 3,300 BC, around the same time as Newgrange was constructed. The primary central Linkardstown cist, called Grave 8 containing four disarticulated inhumations appeared to be the original buirials within a small cairn. The remains proved to belong to a middle-aged man and woman, an adult woman and a child.
Grave 8, the primary or original cist within Poulawack Cairn, which contained the disarticulated remains of three adults and an infant.
The cist was divided into two compartments, with the adults in one cist and the child in the other. In addition, a neolithic hollow scraper, a large boar tusk and two fragments of pottery were found in Grave 8. An oyster shell was also found. It is possible that this burial represented a family. These human remains were dated in 1991 and proved to have been buried in the neolithic between 3,354 and 3,330 BC.
Grave 1 which proved to have been inserted into Poulawack Cairn some 1,800 years after the monument had been built. The photograph is from the 1934 excavation by the Harvard Archaeological Mission.
The site was reused several times, and it's period of use stretches up to about 1,500 BC - meaning it was used for burial for as long as 1,800 years, from the middle neolithic well into the bronze age.
Modern Research
Elsewhere, there is evidence that portal and court tombs were constructed and first used at about 5000 BP/3800 cal BR Of the Burren monuments, only that of Poulnabrone has been excavated and extensively radiocarbon dated (Lynch 1988, 105-7; Hedges et al 1990, 106). As at Poulawack, a decision to date as much as possible of the original contents of the multiple burial at Poulnabrone has yielded evidence of the probable date of construction as well as the extent of subsequent use. The dates may be interpreted in several ways, but at its earliest the chamber could have been used first at c 3900-3800 cal BC, and then subsequently during the middle Neolithic, c 3300-2900 cal BC.
The monument was clearly built and used well before cists of Linkardstown type came into use. There is little reason to think that the other court and portal tombs nearby differ significantly in date from Poulnabrone. It is interesting that the subsequent activity at Poulnabrone was more or less confined to the Neolithic and that with the exception of a neonate, no early Bronze Age burial took place there, whereas at Poulawack no subsequent activity took place during the Neolithic although later activity is visible. It is possible that either two discrete communities were using separate burial monuments or that each monument had its own well defined ritual throughout the Neolithic. During the Bronze Age, the absence of a significant cairn at Poulnabrone probably precluded its use for multiple cist purposes.
Grave 5 which proved to have been inserted into Poulawack Cairn some 1,000 years after the monument had been built. The photograph is from the 1934 excavation by the Harvard Archaeological Mission.
The radiocarbon dating of a large part of a cemetery has been made possible by advances in radiocarbon dating, namely the ability to date small samples. This has meant that it is now possible to collect small samples from large multiple burials and by dating an entire deposit, establish from an otherwise stratigraphically unclear or invisible record, the initial date of use of a site and its subsequent history. This makes possible the dating of intact megalithic chambers and cemeteries. The approach has been demonstrated successfully at Poulawack and Poulnabrone and also at the wedge tombs of Labbacallee and Lough Gur (Brindley and Lanting, this volume).
Since its excavation almost sixty years ago, Poulawack has remained in the forefront of discussions of Irish prehistory, partly because of its location in an area otherwise bereft of excavated sites and partly because of its excellent publication. Poulawack required the development of completely new techniques and their application before the complexity of the monument could be fully explored. Radiocarbon dating by itself can only provide additional information. Thus, we now know that the various burials belong to different periods but their actual relationship to the monument remains the subject of hypothesis. It is doubtful whether even with the benefit of hindsight, the stratigraphical relationships within the monument could have been fully resolved.
Poulawack Cairn as it appears today. The two structures to either side of the cairn appear to be modern animal shelters.
There is no obvious pathway to this monument, and possibly no public access. I parked by a gate where I met some donkeys and crossed a few shaky walls to reach the monument. The cairn is located on the cracked limestone karst pavement, and is surrounded by medieval field walls and enclosures. There are two modern drystone structures, like unfinished sheds, which are probably animal shelters close to the cairn. The cairn may well have been used in later medieval times as an inauguration site, when the new chieftain or ruler would ascend to the top of an ancient mound and symbolically marry the local goddess or landscape deity. A modern practice has begun where visitors are erecting small standing stones around the monument.
Poulawack cairn viewed from the nearby cashel, which appears to have a complex system of souterrains, a series of underground chambers.
