Carrowmore 3

When the first dates from Burenhult's 1977 to 1979 excavations were published, Carrowmore appeared to be maintaining its record-making reputation. Several of the samples returned unusually early dates, some seemingly indicating activity before the arrival of farming to Ireland. This data was used by the excavation director as evidence that Carrowmore possessed some of the oldest megalithic monuments, not just in Ireland, but anywhere in Europe. Burenhult's quick reporting of the dates meant that the site hit the headlines in a major way, prompting articles in the national and international media.

Carrowmore Re-visited - Robert Hensey and Stefan Bergh, 2013.

Carrowmore 3, a small and relatively innocent looking monument, turned out to be one of the more contraversial circles at Carrowmore when Swedish archaeologist Göran Burenhult published a series of extremely early dates after his excavations in 1979. This monument is a classic example of a tertre or early open air passage-grave, where the central burial chamber is supported by a platform—the tertre—which is enclosed by a ring of boulders or kerbstones. A symbolic passage, formed from two lines of boulders, connects the stone circle to the chamber. Circle 3 is one of the most complete monuments remaining at Carrowmore, and is located directly across the road from the Visitor Centre.

There are thirty boulders - glacial erratics from the nearby Ox Mountains - arranged in a ring which measures thirteen meters in diameter. Four boulders have vanished since Petrie's visit in 1837, leaving a gap on the north-east side of the circle. There are two smaller inner circles, measuring 9.7 and 7.5 meters in diameter. The monument was dug by Roger Walker, who "found an internment" sometime between 1825 and 1854.

The circle was measured and described by Petrie, a good friend of Walker who was his host during his visit, in August 1837, working on behalf of the Ordnance Survey. The circle was excavated by Wood-Martin around 1880, and his report, taken from Borlase's Dolmens of Ireland, is given below.

The chamber and passage are oriented to the south-east, across Circle 57 a few degrees left of the centre of the complex at Listoghil. Resent research has demonstrated that the passage is aligned to the rising position of the extreme southern lunar standstill, an event which occurs every 18.6 years. The passage, the symbolic link between the land of the living and the world of the dead, is just over two meters long, and is formed from two parallel lines of stones, which like the other Carrowmore passages, was never roofed. The chamber has a flagged floor and is roofed by a disturbed gneiss slab. The chamber is much too small for a living person to fit inside.

Excavations

The Swedish archaeological team excavated Circle 3 for the first time in 1979. The photograph below is a photomontage taken of the monument during the dig. These montages were taken by setting up a tall tripod on the site. A camera was slid up one of the legs and photographs of different stages during the excavation process were assembled into montages. I find them to be very attractive images, but the technique never took off in Ireland.

Two quadrants of the monument were excavated at this time, and two cists discovered outside the central were found to be filled with cremated human remains. Between the excavations undertaken by Wood-Martin and Burenhult, a total of 33.5 kilograms of cremated bone, estimated to represent some 50 neolithic people, was found in this small monument. Many fragments of bone and red deer antler pins were found, usually in a cracked and burned condition, which suggests that they were a primary part of the burial ritual.

A striking feature of the find material from Grave no. 4 is the enormous amount of cremated human bones amounting to over 31 kilos. The central chamber itself produced over 11 kilos of bones. These high quantities may reflect the long time-span during which the monument was used, documented by the radiocarbon dates. The intensive use of Grave no. 3 for burial purposes is also demonstrated by the large number of antler pins found with the cremations, 65 fragments, including 7 pieces with mushroom-shaped heads.

Integrated Excavation Report for Carrowmore Tomb 3,
Göran Burenhult, 1979, 1994.

Stone beads, a piece of flint and chert were also found.

The carbon dates from this dig published by Burenhult were extremely early: 5,400 and 4,600 cal BC respectively from charcoal in foundation sockets in cist c. 4,100 and 4,000 cal BC. Charcoal from stone sockets c. 3,800 cal BC charcoal from stone socket of passage c.3,000 cal BC: charcoal from secondary inner stone circle. Five dates fell between 3,300 and 2,500 cal BC.

Based on the four earliest dates from the two excavation campaigns, Burenhult continued to maintain an argument for a Late Mesolithic-Early Neolithic chronology of megalithic construction at Carrowmore. As new dating evidence from other sites became available, and as refinements were made in scientific dating methods, this interpretation of the Carrowmore chronology was viewed more and more sceptically by scholars. Sheridan, however, while dismissing claims for the earliest of Burenhult's Carrowmore dates, argued that some ofthe dates could be evidence for the arrival of an Early Neolithic wave of farmers from northwest France before 4000 cal. BC.

Carrowmore Re-visited - Robert Hensey and Stefan Bergh, 2013.

A more recent dating programme using red deer antler was undertaken by Bergh and Hensey in 2013, which demonstrated that the oldest use of Carrowmore was around 3,800 BC, which fits within the dates from the causewayed enclosure at Magheraboy. The monuments were still in use around 3,000 BC. The dating samples came from two monuments, Circle 3 and Circle 55.

Borlase: 1895

No. 3 (I) (dolmen-circle, a few paces East of II).

This circle is forty feet in diameter, and consists of thirty-four stones, of which four have been displaced. The cromleac remains, but the upper stone has been thrown off its supporters. It is only four feet long, eighteen inches thick, and twelve feet in circumference. Mr. Walker had the chamber of this cromleac searched, and found an interment within it. This circle appears to have had an outer one of very large stones, twelve in number, but only six of them now remain.

- George Petrie, 1837.

The cist in this circle is of the figure-of-eight pattern [that is to say, it is a double one], having a longer axis south-southeast and north-northwest The circle round it measures forty-two feet in diameter. One flag, evidently a covering-stone, remains; but it is partially sunk into the chamber, the side-stones of which average about three feet six inches in depth.

An excavation was made, and was carried down to the flagged floor of the cist, traces of which were apparent.

Abundant calcined and uncalcined remains were brought to light, as well as three stone-beads, and a pendant formed of a natural quartz prism, clear as glass, through the amorphous end of which a hole had been pierced for suspension. This hole was, on both sides, considerably wider externally than in the centre, showing that it had been bored with rude appliances...... It appeared to have been submitted to intense heat, for, on lifting it, part of the extremity of the prism flaked off when touched.

Besides this amulet of quartz, there was found in this cist a stone bead formed of steatite, somewhat round in form, of a whitish colour, and highly calcined, and a second bead, also formed of steatite, and highly calcined, but smaller and more elongated in shape, having the diameter of the perforation equal throughout, which is not the case in the rounder bead, where the orifices are larger than the central portion of the hole. Bluish stains in these beads result from the presence of phosphate of iron from the calcined bones. A third bead resembling the first is formed of a stone of a yellowish-brown colour. It is pierced with a hole, in which the marks left by the rotatory motion of the implement, with which it was pierced, are distinctly visible. It did not seem to have been affected by intense heat, as the others had. The material was steatite.

In shape this bead resembles precisely one found by me in a tumulus at Ballowal in West Cornwall. The form, too, of the quartz pendant is similar to that of a stone pendant, found also by me, together with blue barrel-shaped vitreous beads, in a cairn at Boscregan in the same district. In the latter cairn, together with the beads and pendant, was a little button with two perforations joining in the centre, formed of steatite (see "Archaeologia," vol. xlix. p. 189).

Steatite is found at Crohey Head in Donegal, and also in Antrim. In addition to the beads, several fragments of bone pins were found in this cist. One of them - the upper portion, which exhibits a head carved into a mushroom shape - is in a petrified state. Another fragment is perhaps the curved point of the same pin. Another piece is curved and polished, and a fourth is the tapering portion of a straight implement. There was also a completely petrified portion of bone like a spear-head, artificially dressed at the point, possibly used as a whetstone.

- William Gregory Wood-Martin.

This tomb was the richest in relics of the entire series. The uncalcined remains, considered to be human, included a metatarsal bone of the left foot, a portion of a cervical vertebra, a piece of a radius (fore-arm bone), a piece of a dorsal vertebra. There were also uncalcined bones of animals, birds, and fish (gurnard). The calcined remains consisted of about 28 lbs. of small fragments of bones, so saturated with lime salts that many were completely petrified. Numerous pieces were charred, and coloured bluish grey or black from the action of fire. There were many fragments presenting crack-like marks, but none distinctly human. There were also (a) fragments of bones not human, mostly small portions of the skulls of pigs; (b) nine pieces of petrified bone, and one charred lump; (c) a smooth, flattish, circular stone, very dark in colour, similar to, but smaller than one found in No. 4 monument. This stone weighed 1 oz. 3 drms. 50 grs. It was 5/8 of an inch long, 1 9/16 of an inch broad, and 0.5 inch thick.

A similar disc was found with an urn at Rathbarran.

With the form of the double cist in this monument we may compare such structures as those of Arnasbrack, Carrownagh, etc. It appears to me not improbable that a line of cists, of which these two are the inner ones, terminated at the south-southeast, in the ring surrounding this cairn.

- William Borlase.