Gnomon's Guide

Ireland is littered with ancient stone monuments, from castles dating back a few hundred years to tombs dating back five thousand years. This entry deals with the ancient tombs, of which there are the remains of more than 1,300 throughout the island.

Background

Thousands of years ago, Ireland was sparsely populated by a hunter-gatherer community. In about 4000 BC, the Neolithic Farming Revolution arrived in Ireland, bringing a farming lifestyle to the country. It is not known how much of this was new people arriving and how much was the native people changing their way of life; there's no doubt that the farm animals were brought to Ireland from abroad in boats, so communication and trade with other countries was obviously taking place. Whatever the details, Ireland developed into a farming country with settled communities. This period was called the Neolithic or New Stone Age. It lasted from about 4000 BC to about 2000 BC. During that period, these farmers set about clearing Ireland of its primeval forest and converting it to fields of farming land.

The Stone Age people did not build houses of stone; they lived in wooden huts with thatched rooves. Stone was used for their tools: axes, knives and ploughshares were all made from it - initially flint which cracks to form a very sharp edge, and later a polished black stone called porcellanite, which is not as sharp but wears better.

Although these people lived in wooden huts, they buried their dead in elaborate stone tombs. The existence of these tombs tells us a few things:

• These people lived in communities, rather than in solitary farmsteads. The tombs use very large stones which could not have been shifted by a single person. Gangs of people working together would have been required to finish a tomb.

• Far more people were needed to build a tomb than could be buried in the tomb, so only some people got buried in tombs. This suggests a stratified society with some sort of a chief or priest getting special treatment.

• These people must have believed in some sort of afterlife. Construction details of the tombs suggest that these people held the sun as very important. Perhaps they worshipped it as a god.

• Although the stone used to make the tombs is crude and unshaped, indicating very little skill in cutting stone, the positioning of the stones is very precise in relation to the position of the sun - most of the tombs are aligned in particular directions such as towards the rising sun on a particular day, and in the most elaborate, the sun shines along a passageway on a particular day of the year. This indicates that the ancient people were skilled observers of the skies and capable of keeping records over many years.

• Some of the tombs have decoration on the stones, in the form of spirals, triangles and zig-zags. While these do not appear to be any attempt at representation, they are the beginnings of art.

The Basic Design of a Neolithic Tomb

The word 'megalith' means 'large stone' and is used to describe all the tombs in this entry, as well as other later constructions such as stone circles. Large stones are the most significant feature of all these tombs. The basic Neolithic tomb has three features:

• A chamber - this is a stone-lined space in which the remains of the dead person are laid. The body was sometimes cremated and the ashes placed in a stone basin or an earthenware pot in the basin. Sometimes, the uncremated body was buried. There seems to be no preference between burial and cremation: often both methods were used in the same tomb. The chamber may be big enough to allow 20 people to stand in, or it may be as small as a metre by metre box.

• A doorway - the door consists of two upright flat stones facing each other and a lintel stone above. These stones seem to have been symbolically important, as they were always present, even though the other parts of the tomb varied considerably over the centuries.

• A mound - in most of the designs of tomb, the whole thing was covered in a mound of clay and stones, so that all that was visible from the outside was a mound with a stone doorway.

There were four basic types of tomb, and these were used at different times in different parts of Ireland. Some of these types are also found in other parts of Europe, such as Great Britain and Brittany.

Court Tombs

The earliest type of stone tomb found in Ireland is the court tomb, built mainly in the period 4000 - 3500 BC. There are more than 400 of these, and they are found almost entirely in the northern half of the country; they're particularly common around Sligo.

The tomb itself consists of a number of square or rectangular chambers in a line, each made from flat stones standing upright ('orthostats') and other flat stones across the top. A mound is constructed over the whole tomb, usually about 25m long and about 15m wide. The line of the tomb is from west to east and the doorway into the tomb faces east. The court tomb has a flat semi-circular area in front of the doorway known as a 'court'. The court is paved with stone and surrounded by standing stones. Presumably the court was used for rituals during the funeral.

Most court tombs in existence have been damaged over the years so that the mound is gone and the roof stones removed, leaving only the side stones. A good example of a court tomb, which has been somewhat reconstructed, can be seen at Creevykeel, Co Sligo.

Portal Tombs or Dolmens

Portal tombs appear to have developed from court tombs. They
are so-called because of the importance of the doorway (portal means doorway). As well as other vertical stones, they have two very large stones forming the doorway and an enormous stone which not only covers the doorway but also covers the whole tomb. This 'capstone' can be anything from 20 to 90 tonnes in weight so it would need a very big team of workers to put it in place. The capstone normally slopes so that it is highest at the doorway. Portal tombs are not and were never covered in a mound but stand with the stones exposed.

There are about 180 portal tombs scattered around Ireland, mainly in Ulster but with a small concentration in South Dublin and Waterford. They are usually built on low-lying ground.

A very good example of a portal tomb is the Proleek Dolmen. Situtated in the Cooley peninsula to the northeast of Dundalk, it is well sign-posted and easily reached through the grounds of Ballymascanlon Hotel. The dolmen has a capstone estimated at 30 tonnes in weight.

Passage Tombs

Passage tombs or passage graves were built in the period from 3500 to 3000 BC. There are about 240 of them. Unlike other tombs which are isolated, passage tombs tend to be built in 'cemeteries', that is, collections of a large number of such tombs. The most significant of these cemeteries are in Meath at Brú na Bóinne and Loughcrew, and in Sligo at Carrowkeel and Creevykeel.

Passage tombs are a development of court tombs: the chamber is large and often cross-shaped, with a narrow stone-lined passage leading to it. The mound is circular and may be enormous: more than 80 metres in diameter in the biggest of these. Newgrange at Brú na Bóinne in County Meath is the best example of a passage tomb and is open to the public. Excavations around Newgrange show that originally the front of the mound was faced with white stones. All the way around the base of the mound was a ring of large stones covered in engravings. There are also engravings inside the passage and chamber: these are the only Neolithic tombs to show any sort of engravings. The patterns are abstract ones - spirals, diamonds and zigzags, although it has been speculated that some of them represent the phases of the moon.

While the court tombs always faced east, the passages of the passage tombs point in many different directions. Many of them are built to align with the sun so that the sun's rays can shine down the passage on a significant date: for example, passages facing southeast catch the rays at sunrise on the winter solstice, as happens in Newgrange. Passages facing west are aligned with the setting sun at the equinox. Some of the bigger mounds may have two separate passages, each aligned to a different solar event.

In the smaller tombs, the roof of the chamber is made from flat slabs of rock placed directly on the side walls. For the larger chambers of the bigger tombs such as Newgrange, this is not possible as the span is too wide. A different technique called 'corbelling' is used, where a first layer of slabs rests on the walls and projects a short way; the next layer projects further, and so on until the final slab covers the hole in the centre. This gives the chamber a crude domed shape.

Passage tombs were usually built on the tops of mountains so that they could be seen from a long way off. The 'Fairy Castle' cairn on the top of Two Rock Mountain just south of Dublin, for example, is a passage tomb which can be seen for forty or fifty miles.

Wedge Tombs

The Wedge Tomb is the smallest and latest of the tomb types. These were built at the very end of the Neolithic Age from about 2500 to 2000 BC. There are more than 500 of them. They are most common in Clare, with about a quarter of all wedge tombs. Southwest Ireland has another quarter, and the remaining half are mainly scattered around the west and northwest of the country.

Here the chamber has become just a box. The passage widens to the doorway, in the wedge shape that gives the tomb its name. The whole thing is capped with flat stones and covered in a very small mound, sometimes only one metre high. Nowadays in many wedge tombs, the mound has been eroded away, leaving only the box-like stones of the tomb. Wedge tombs are usually built about three-quarters the way up a mountain, and the doorway nearly always faces southwest.

A good example of a wedge tomb can be found at Lough Gur, a wonderful site in County Limerick with many ancient remains, including the Great Stone Circle, the biggest in Ireland. Follow the signs from Limerick to Lough Gur, as far as the car park. Turn left out of the car park, bear right, turning right again at the next crossing. The tomb is signposted on your left. If you get as far as the new church, then you've gone too far. The tomb was built in about 2500 BC and is about 8m by 3.5m. The burial 'gallery' is divided into two chambers. Originally it would have had a mound over it. Archaeology has revealed the remains of at least eight adults and four children buried in it.

The Bronze Age Arrives

Around 2000 BC, bronze goods started arriving into Ireland. This was the beginning of the Bronze Age. There was a gradual change to a new form of society, with different customs. This may or may not have been caused by the arrival of the new metal and the whole culture required to mine and refine it. Burial customs changed as well, and the Bronze Age people stopped building the enormous tombs, preferring to bury their dead in small stone-lined graves called 'cists'.

The Bronze Age people specialised in another type of large stone monument, which does not appear to have been connected with tombs: the stone circle. But that's another story!