CONTENTS
Newgrange, Boyne Valley, Co. Meath
| LATITUDE: 53° 41’ 40.69” N | LONGITUDE: 6° 28’ 31.67” W |
Quite justifiably people come from all over the world to see Newgrange and doubtless some of them fail to realize that it is just one of a number of very similar tombs in the Boyne Valley of Ireland. Not so far away are Knowth and Dowth, which all together form part of what is known as the Brú na Bóinne, clearly one of the most important prehistoric landscapes in Europe or beyond. The Brú na Bóinne contains many tombs, standing stones, stone circles, remnants of timber circles and many other little-understood features from the very remote past. Taken all together the Brú na Bóinne is classified as a UNESCO world heritage site.
Newgrange itself is both spectacular and of the utmost importance when it comes to understanding the people who were living in the British Isles a good 500 years before a single stone was moved on the Giza Plateau in Egypt. Other Neolithic sites might suggest that, despite their abilities to move great stones around the landscape, these long-lost people were short on artistry and therefore probably lacking in culture, but one look at Newgrange will quickly dispel any such idea and shows just how refined its builders were. It must surely be certain that their subtlety, religious imperatives, and sophistication matched both their artistic skills and their engineering competency.
An Irish Passage Tomb
What we see at Newgrange today is a passage tomb. It has largely been reconstructed in terms of the way it looks from the outside, but every effort was made in the 1970s to merely put it back to what it was when first created, around 5,000 years ago. The visitor’s first appreciation of the site is a very large mound, surrounded by a wall of white quartz stone that scintillates in even the feeblest sunlight. The tomb has a single entrance in its southeastern side and this leads along a passage for 60ft (18.95 metres) into the heart of the mound, where it takes on a cruciform shape. Once in this cross-shaped section the visitor can observe the corbelled roof above and also appreciate the size of many of the large stones that were used to line the chamber and the passage. Here, within what must surely have been a deeply revered and sacred spot, was where the bones or cremated remains of those long-lost people were laid – though for how long, why or with what ultimate intention in mind, we still do not know.
Figure 45: Newgrange in Ireland is one of the most impressive prehistoric tombs in the British Isles
There are many observers of these truly ancient tombs who doubt that they were really intended to be tombs at all, at least not initially. True, most orthodox archaeologists still accept that this is what they must have been but other people point out that a church or cathedral, for example, contains the bones of the dead but that neither is ever considered to be, first and foremost, a tomb. However, if the chamber at locations such as Newgrange was not primarily a place of the dead, then what was it? Certainly it cannot have been a location where a congregation could have gathered because, as impressive as it is, it would not have been possible to assemble even a cross section of the community within its space. We are left with few clues, except the bones, but it is likely that it served a number of different functions. One possible explanation is that individual bodies, or even parts of them, were deposited within the chamber for only a specified period, maybe a year or less, until they could be somehow ‘recreated’ by the light of the rising Sun at midwinter.
Figure 46: Plan of the interior of Newgrange
The Magic of the Shortest Day
As is the case with Maeshowe in Scotland, the passage at Newgrange was cunningly and carefully created in such a way that the light of the rising Sun on the shortest day of the year would pass immediately down the passage and into the chamber beyond. Indeed, at Newgrange, a special ‘box’ was created above the tomb’s entrance so that this phenomenon could take place, whether or not the tomb was sealed. So we might envisage a scenario in which individuals from the community who may have died during a particular year had their bodies prepared in a very specific way, perhaps being exposed until the flesh disappeared from them. They might then be placed in the chamber, which would be resealed until after the next winter solstice. It is even conceivable that after this had taken place the bodies of the dead, or parts of them, were not considered to have any merit or relevance, which is why they were not treated with any undue reverence subsequently.
I stress that this is just one idea that occurs to me. It seems to fit most of the facts but it is distinctly lacking in substance or detail, and that is because we simply do not have sufficient evidence to be certain. In this scenario the tomb would then effectively be a ‘resurrection chamber’, an initial idea which I credit primarily to my fellow writer and researcher Christopher Knight. If this was the case perhaps everyone in the community ultimately took their turn to be the focus of the winter solstice celebrations and to be recharged, or reborn, under the light of the pale midwinter Sun, either to be considered reborn into the normal world or to pass to some existence beyond it.
Whether or not this is merely fanciful nonsense we may never know for certain. What we do know is that the Neolithic farmers that created Newgrange, and its companion passage tombs, left us a snapshot of their lives and capabilities in many other ways. A significant number of objects were found in the passage and chamber of Newgrange over the years. Although most of these disappeared into private collections, or were eventually discarded, there were enough of them to show that people had come and gone within the tomb for a considerable period of time. These finds included pendants, stone marbles, flakes of flint, bone pins and other oddments of everyday life within this ancient community. Some of these were doubtless deliberate votive offerings, whilst others may simply have been lost or discarded.
Enigmatic Carvings
One of the things that Newgrange does show us is just how good the Neolithic people were when it came to stone carving. There is an assortment of large stones in and around the monument that were deliberately and painstakingly carved into all manner of (apparently) abstract patterns. In fact they are probably not abstract at all. Let’s face it, the letters of our own alphabet only make sense because we are taught to understand their meaning. In the absence of this knowledge they could appear to be random shapes. The many swirls, spirals, lozenges and other designs still to be seen at Newgrange doubtless had quite specific meanings to the people who created them, although they defy interpretation as far as we are concerned.
Ireland is quite rightfully extremely proud of its flagship monument at Newgrange. The mound rises to a height of 40ft (12 metres) and covers an area of over an acre (0.4 hectares). The stones comprising the structure were not cut from the living rock to complete the project because it is clear that they were extensively weathered before they were put into place. Nevertheless, the job of finding such a large amount of stone in the locality must have been daunting and it has been estimated that the task of creating Newgrange as we see it today probably took in excess of 30 years. It has also been shown that many of the smaller passage tombs in the same area are slightly older than Newgrange and so it has to be a possibility that the builders gradually refined their skills and techniques across a significant period of time.
Figure 47: One of the magnificent carved stones flanking Newgrange
Even when the primary purpose of Newgrange may have been forgotten, or had changed over centuries, the site did not lose either its significance or presumably its mystique. It is known from post holes that a significant number of wooden circles or other structures were erected on or near the site in the centuries following completion of the tomb. And much later, by the time of the Bronze Age, the site was still a place of reverence because a circle of stones was erected around the tomb, something that probably took place a good 1,000 years after building began on the site. This may have been a later culture subsuming the ‘magic’ of a site that was already ancient to them, or there may indeed have been a type of continuity – though it is hard to see how memories could have been passed intact by a non-literate culture for so many centuries. We can imagine that the passage tomb was already a deeply revered site for the stone-erectors of the Bronze Age and they might even have thought it was an entry into the ‘other world’ or was related in some way to the mysterious ‘people of the hollow hills’ who still represent a tangible component of Irish folklore.
Use and Disuse
The latest research tends to indicate that although the Bronze Age people of the area clearly did think the site was significant, their immediate forebears probably did not. There is evidence that the passage grave fell into disrepair before the Bronze Age began and that people were living around its broken edges – probably without paying it too much religious attention. Migrations took place regularly in the late Stone Age and Bronze Age British Isles. People probably arrived whose religious imperatives were different, and to them the passage grave may have had no particular significance. Only later, when the locals became detached from true memories of the original nature of the site, was it once again revered and the stones erected around it.
Newgrange is a truly remarkable place. I sometimes wonder if we, living here in these islands, have the slightest comprehension of what we have within our midst. At the time these structures were erected there was no civilization worth the name existent anywhere in Europe. Only the embryonic states of the Near and Middle East were starting to climb out of the obscurity of prehistory and great Egypt was also in a fairly infantile state. The British Isles at the time must have seemed a very advanced place in comparison with what surrounded it and a culture that existed in a relatively narrow swathe from parts of Scandinavia in the north, in an arc, down through Great Britain and Ireland and into Brittany, probably shone like a star amidst the surrounding darkness of primitive subsistence farming. No wonder the most ancient tales of other civilizations talk about those ‘magical islands to the north’, where the weather was always good, where people were learned and educated and where the technology was breathtaking. It is entirely possible, though they didn’t realize it, that they were speaking about places such as Newgrange.
Freed from the wealth of immigrants and invaders that came and went across the water in England, Scotland and Wales, it is likely that the indigenous populations of Ireland endured for longer with their old beliefs and practices intact. There may also have been more continuity of belief, especially in the magical nature of certain locations such as Newgrange.
Newgrange stands within a deeply significant ritual landscape that retained its potency and significance into relatively recent times. The Irish themselves remembered those who had laboured to build such structures and they assumed the proportion of giants, or else people who had magical powers. It is likely that Irish oral history goes back many thousands of years and it may have much to tell us.
Carrowmore Passage Tomb Cemetery, Co. Sligo
| LATITUDE: 54° 14’ 53.68” N | LONGITUDE: 8° 31’ 6.88” W |
It’s a fair bet that a good cross section of those reading this book will never have heard of Carrowmore, and yet it should rank as one of the finest collections of truly ancient tombs to be found anywhere in the British Isles. It is located in Co. Sligo, on the Cúil Irra Peninsula, and it is one of the most significant mortuary sites ever to be created. What is more, it is the centre of great controversy and if some of its evidence is to be truly believed, it may tell us something quite remarkable about when at least some of these incredible structures were planned and executed.
There are presently a known 30 or so tombs to be found in the Carrowmore passage tomb cemetery, though there are probably more that are lost or still not discovered.
Most of the tombs represent ‘dolmen circles’ in which not particularly large dolmens (see Dolmen) were surrounded at a distance of around 13 to 16 yards (12 to 15 metres) by a ring of large stones. It used to be argued, and by some people still is, that the dolmens had originally been covered with a mound, though there are many knowledgeable experts these days who will state categorically that, in the case of the Carrowmore tombs, no mound ever existed. Some of the tombs have a pentagonal burial chamber, whilst others were roughly circular. Each monument was built on a platform, doubtless to level it in the undulating landscape, and many of the dolmens represent satellite tombs around larger and grander central tombs, towards which they face. In this case the site takes on a situation akin to some of the larger pyramids of Egypt, in which relatives of a particular pharaoh would have small pyramids built in close association with the much larger pyramid of the pharaoh himself, as if to gain their own immortality by showing themselves to be allied to him in death as much as they were in life. Maybe, therefore, the highest class of society occupied the central tombs at Carrowmore, with less elevated individuals dealt with in the satellite dolmen tombs.
Preparing the Bodies
Bodies or parts of bodies interred in the tombs at Carrowmore can be shown to have undergone a lengthy and complicated process of preparation before being laid to rest. Part inhumation, part cremation, seems to have been the norm, though subsequent advances in examination may throw more light upon what was really taking place in terms of burials at this extensive site.
And now we come to a situation of great controversy regarding the site at Carrowmore – namely, how old is it? Usually, radio carbon dating can be relied upon to offer a sensible age range for a site, but at Carrowmore this has not proved to be possible. Excavations meticulously carried out between the 1970s and the 1990s returned radio carbon dates from reliable sources as being around 5400 BC. This creates a great puzzle because it has been universally accepted that all the Neolithic structures were created by settled farming communities, whereas farming had not commenced in Ireland by this very early period. True, there were people living in Ireland at the time, but they would have been hunter-gatherers, who have never been associated with building of any sort that has survived the test of time.
Is the dating suspect? Are we wrong about the period when farming did reach our islands? Were the hunter-gatherers more capable than we have henceforth realized? At the moment the jury is still out regarding these issues, though the contentious carbon dates won’t go away. People have tried to explain them away in terms of those who built the monuments having utilized wood that was already ancient when they found it, but this seems slightly implausible. Having said that, there is a great tradition in Ireland and in other parts of the British Isles for using what is known as ‘bog oak’; trees that were flooded and which have survived as usable wood for many centuries. Whether this could be the case or not cannot be ascertained for certain though most bog oak is truly ancient, predating even a remote 5400 BC.
An Ancient Legacy
More and more people on the fringes of prehistory research are now suggesting that the period of building in our islands commenced very much earlier than we have hitherto realized and no doubt the arguments will rage for a long time to come. What is known is that other parts of the same site have revealed a dating broadly in accord with other tombs built in the Neolithic period – so the whole thing is deeply confusing.
Sligo, as a county, contains a number of different types of tomb of great age. These include classifications I mentioned in the A–Z section of the book, such as passage tombs, wedge tombs and of course the portal dolmen tombs. Whether these were all built, maybe at slightly different times, by the same culture, or if they represent new influxes of people is, at the moment, difficult to say. Doubtless as scientific skills increase, more and more evidence will come to light and many of these questions may be answered.
In the meantime Carrowmore is one of the most fascinating places imaginable, even though anyone without the slightest knowledge of matters prehistoric might drive past it without a second glance. The area is not hardgoing on foot (though as with other such places the ground undulates and could not be considered to provide reliable disabled access). There is a visitor centre nearby, which is open from the late spring until the autumn, and as usual almost anywhere in the British Isles it would be advisable to have stout footwear and good waterproofs. One of the reasons that Ireland in particular in so green is because it rains on so many days of the average year!
Beaghmore Complex, Co. Tyrone
| LATITUDE: 54° 42’ 3.97” N | LONGITUDE: 6° 56’ 14.46” W |
For anyone who relishes a real puzzle from prehistory, Beaghmore in Northern Ireland represents an interesting day out. Many of the monuments at Beaghmore defy description within the general classifications, though archaeologist Aubrey Burl commented that some of them have a commonality with vaguely similar structures in Cumbria, England.
Nothing was even known of Beaghmore until the 1940s, when peat cutting in the area began to reveal some intriguing features that had been covered for many centuries. Eventually a whole sequence of stone circles, cists, piles of stones and other associated structures became evident and the whole area began to take on such an importance that moves were made to preserve and safeguard the site.
It is thought that the structures at Beaghmore were created in the early Bronze Age, though since not all the site has been adequately excavated or dated it is entirely possible that parts of it are much older. In and around Beaghmore, and within a relatively small area, there are no less than seven stone circles. None of these have very high stones and some of them are definitely not circles at all. It is likely that in at least some of the cases they originally surrounded burials of one sort or another.
In addition to the circles, some of which seem to have quite definite astronomical alignments, there are also 12 cairns and 10 rows of stones. To find so many stone rows in such a small area is virtually unique and since it has been shown that stone rows quite often have an astronomical significance, we can assume that the same was the case here, even in the case of rows where no pattern relating to the sky has been discerned yet. It is known, for example, that three of the stone rows point to the winter solstice, which, as we have seen, had a tremendous importance to these early builders in stone. Astronomical alignments for the other rows may not have been found yet, but the sky is a complex subject for study and doubtless sense will eventually be made of all the rows.
At Beaghmore there are many small cairns in and around the site, some of which have been found to contain the remains of human cremation and since there are also burials at the centre of at least some of the circles, there does seem to have been a direct connection between Beaghmore and whatever funeral rites and beliefs were prevalent when it was built.
A Range of Purposes
Strangely enough, we find at Beaghmore a whole site that has been reused after originally having been put to a different purpose. Archaeologists have been able to show that the land upon which all the present structures stand was once farmed in the Neolithic period. It is possible that the land lost its fertility because the earliest farmers used a slash-and-burn technique of farming that easily exhausted nutrients in the soil. Once it could no longer be reliably farmed, it would probably have made sense to put the land to some other use and so an extensive ritual site began to develop there.
Eventually the natural vegetation grew up around all the structures and the bog overtook it. For century upon century the stones stood below the turf, getting deeper and deeper, until someone came along to cut the peat for fertilizer or fuel, and happened upon the stones. In truth, this already extensive site could turn out to be much larger than it looks right now, since other components could still be hiding beneath the adjacent peat. What went on here is unknown, but it can be fairly conjectured that it had a religious aspect and that ancestor worship may well have been part of the site’s function. In addition, astronomical observation almost certainly took place at Beaghmore.
This is a particularly intriguing and fascinating area and although its stones are generally fairly small and therefore don’t appear all that impressive, the many mysteries of a site which only showed itself again so recently are going to keep local experts interested for a very long time.
The Giant’s Ring, Shaw’s Bridge, Belfast
| LATITUDE: 54° 32’ 24.52” N | LONGITUDE: 5° 56’ 57.87” W |
The north of England is not alone in possessing a super-henge in relatively good condition. There is also one to be found in Northern Ireland and it really is a giant. The henge that has come to be known as the Giant’s Ring is almost exactly the same size as those to be found at Thornborough in North Yorkshire, England. In many ways it is very similar and probably served a similar purpose, though in the case of the Giant’s Ring there is the added bonus in that the remains of a passage tomb lie at the centre of the henge. The tomb is almost certainly later than the henge and, in my estimation at least, the primary astronomical function of the henge had either been forgotten or abandoned by the time the passage grave was created. In other words, a deeply revered site that was already hundreds of years old, the function of which was no longer relevant, must have seemed like an ideal place to put a passage grave.
We know little or nothing of the people who created either the henge or the tomb, and if prehistoric research is sometimes significantly lacking in England and Scotland, it is worse in parts of Northern Ireland. This is probably because the landscape is still essentially rural in nature. Sites don’t tend to encroach on habitation (though the Giant’s Ring is not far from Belfast) and even the curious antiquarians of the 18th and 19th centuries were not so active here.
The Giant’s Ring is slightly different from its English cousins in that there is no appreciable ditch to be seen around the henge. What is more, the centre of the henge is dished, as if material for the banks had been scraped from the surface of the interior. There are at least three entrances into the henge that seem to be original, though in a way it is hard to tell since this particular super-henge is now a major public amenity. At one time horse racing used to take place here and locals from Belfast come daily to fly kites, walk dogs, to jog or simply to take some fresh air in a wonderful location. Do be careful what time you visit though because the gates are allegedly closed at 4pm, though this is Ireland and so that might be something of an approximation.
