ARCHITECTURE AND IMAGERY IN THE IRISH MIDDLE NEOLITHIC
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ARCHITECTURE AND IMAGERY IN THE IRISH MIDDLE NEOLITHIC |
This chapter considers Neolithic megalithic imagery in two of the largest and most important passage grave (temple) cemeteries in Ireland: Loughcrew and the bend of the Boyne (Figure 3.1). I prefer to use the term ‘temple’ in order to indicate the social and religious significance of these monuments, which is far beyond their use implied by the standard term ‘passage grave’. These temples, among the largest and most spectacular known in Europe, are highly elaborated with graphic imagery. They have by far the greatest concentration of megalithic ‘art’ known in Europe, and one of them, Knowth, has about 45 percent of the total of decorated stones known for Ireland (Eogan 1986:168). At the time of its construction, the decorated kerb of the Knowth temple would have presented the greatest visual spectacle anywhere in Neolithic northern Europe.
The majority of the motifs were picked on the surface of the stones in a series of pits or pickings with a sharp point of flint or quartz. This was undertaken in a variety of ways: (1) line picking, to create particular individual motifs such as spirals; (2) solid or area picking, to infill particular graphic elements such as lozenges, or fill a surface area of the stone; (3) diffuse picking over the entire surface of the stone or parts of it; (4) close area picking of parts of the stone; and (5) pick dressing of the overall stone surface or large areas of it, removing the surface (C. O’Kelly 1982: Shee Twohig 1981; O’Sullivan 2002). Sometimes almost the entire surface of the slab is picked, leaving unpicked areas to stand out in relief. In this case unpicked areas form the motif. So picking could be used to create motifs either in the positive or the negative. Picked lines were sometimes deepened by rubbing with a smooth pebble to achieve a more even groove, as on the entrance kerb stone to Newgrange (see below). Another technique was to scratch or incise the surface. Sometimes this technique was used to mark guidelines subsequently infilled with line or area picking (Shee Twohig 1981; Eogan and Aboud 1990).
Figure 3.1. The distribution of passage graves (temples) in Ireland, showing the locations of the Loughcrew temples and those of the bend of the Boyne. Source: After Eogan 1986: fig. 45.
The imagery is almost entirely graphic or geometric and seemingly ‘abstract’ in character. The motifs present on the decorated stones in Irish temples have long been divided by scholars into ten basic categories, although many are ambiguous and indeterminate in form (Shee Twohig 1981: 107; C. O’Kelly 1973; 1982: 146; O’Sullivan 2002: 659). The main forms are curvilinear (circles, spirals, arcs, meandering lines, and dots in circles) or rectilinear (zigzags, lozenges, radials, parallel lines, and offsets or comb-devices). Besides these, there are numerous cupmarks, and every commentator has remarked that in most cases it is impossible to distinguish whether these were deliberately created or enlargements of preexisting hollows or irregularities on the surface (Figure 3.2).
Figure 3.2. Classification of the graphic designs occurring in the Irish temples, showing the main variant forms (after Shee Twohig 1981: fig. 11). 1: circle; 2: circle with central dot; 3: U motif; 4: spiral; 5: radial; 6: parallel lines; 7: offset motif; 8: wavy lines; 9: zigzags; 10: lozenges/triangles; 11: cupmarks.
Eogan (1986) has listed a series of fourteen different ‘styles’ of Irish temple ‘art’, but what is meant by the term ‘style’ is rather unclear. Most are simply defined in terms of the dominant motif used—for instance, the spiral style, circular style, or dispersed circular style. Here we have ‘styles’ defined in terms of single motif forms. By contrast, Eogan’s ‘angular style’ lumps together a variety of different motifs—lozenges, triangles, and chevrons—while his ‘angular-spiral style’ refers to stones with both spirals and angular motifs. Other so-called styles are not based on motif form at all but are instead evaluative statements: ‘lavish’, ‘unaccomplished’, ‘random’ (ibid.: 153–65). As O’Sullivan has pointed out, the difficulty with all these approaches is the reduction of the imagery to a series of elementary forms, ignoring non-formal ornamentation such as the pick-dressing of stones (O’Sullivan 1986: 71).
These temples were centres for collective burial. Cremation was the predominant rite, which took place on pyres somewhere outside the temples before deposition of the remains inside the temple chambers. A close connection might be assumed to exist between landscape and architecture, imagery, and rites of passage concerned with death and the regeneration of life. These themes will be explored here in relation to the manner in which the monuments, their external and internal architectural spaces, their imagery and decorative surfaces, are experienced through the body.
In the first section of this chapter a descriptive account of the temples is undertaken, examining the relationship between the temples and their landscape settings, the imagery, and their external and internal architectural spaces. The second section discusses the material qualities of the stones and other materials used to construct the temples. In the third section the significance and power of the imagery are addressed in the light of these considerations. In the conclusions various strands of these discussions are drawn together to argue that the imagery was intimately related to embodied human experiences of stone and water, temple and landscape, processions of people and the movement of celestial bodies in the heavens.
EXPERIENCING THE MONUMENTS
The accounts below are inevitably subjective experiences, and I make no claims here that this is an objective account. I do not describe the imagery on every stone in detail, for that would simply result in a catalogue. Shee Twohig (1981), C. O’Kelly (1982), and O’Kelly and O’Kelly (1983) have provided excellent catalogues for Loughcrew, Newgrange, and Dowth, ‘objectively’ showing what motifs occur on the stones but often ‘subjectively’not illustrating areas of pick dressing thought to be relatively unimportant. These provide extremely helpful guides to a modern visual experience of the imagery, showing one where to look. The principal concern here, however, is with the impression the imagery makes through somatic experience of it. Although this is inevitably a contemporary experience and certainly not a ‘Neolithic’ one, the simple claim being made here is that any human experience of these monuments, either past or present, is bodily mediated. Different persons, according to knowledge and circumstances, experience these monuments in different ways, and what ultimately is important about this are the experiences and impressions that they take away with them and remember and the narratives and meanings that they are able to construct from these experiences. Thus, the accounts that follow are memories, set into narratives. In relation to Loughcrew, Dowth, and Newgrange, the accounts are inevitably heavily influenced by the availability of detailed documentation for all the stones. For Knowth site 1, such documentation has still not been published. Eogan’s (1986; 1996; 1997; 1998; Eogan and Aboud 1990) illustrations of the kerbstones and of the stones inside the temples are both partial and selective. Their scale, and the level of detail provided, act as a rather unreliable guide to an experience of the stones themselves. We can be sure that people in the Neolithic did not react to the stones through the medium of two-dimensional paper documentation and certainly did not experience everything, whether it was hidden or not. In this respect, at least, this contemporary account of Knowth may bear a greater resemblance to a ‘Neolithic’ experience and impression of that monument. I start with a brief discussion of the relationship of the monuments to the surrounding landscape and then consider them from the outside and the inside, starting with the Loughcrew temples first and then examining those of the bend of the Boyne.
Loughcrew
The Loughcrew ridge is situated 57 km due west of the mouth of the river Boyne. On this curving east–west ridge there are four summit areas: Patrickstown, Carnbane East, Newtown, and Carnbane West, all rising above 250 OD over a distance of 4.5 km. Clustering on these summits, a temple cemetery of around 30 temples was built (Figure 3.3). Rising up to 276 m, this ridge dominates the surrounding low-lying and undulating landscape in its vicinity (see Fraser 1998 and Cochrane 2005 for a detailed discussion of the localised topographic placement and interrelationships of the temples). Some of the higher summit temples are very prominent landmarks that punctuate the skyline and are visible from many miles around. From them there are panoramic views across Ireland, almost from coast to coast. Conwell, one of the antiquarian excavators of these temples in the 1860s and 1890s, claims that hills in 18 of the 32 counties of Ireland are visible from here (McMann 1993: 46). To the northeast the Mourne Mountains and Slieve Gullion are prominent, the Wicklow Mountains and the Hill of Tara are to the southeast, the Iron Mountains to the northeast, and the Slieve Bloom Mountains to the south. The river Blackwater, an east-flowing tributary of the Boyne, rises just to the north of the Loughcrew ridge, providing a physical connection between the temples here and those of the Boyne valley. The temples here are generally considered to be fairly late in the sequence of temple construction in Ireland, dating from the mid-fourth to early third millennium B.C. (Sheridan 1986; Cooney 2000), with the largest temples being constructed towards the end of the sequence. Imagery is documented from the inside of many of the monuments, and on two external kerbstones of two different temples, but most are very ruinous and fragmentary. The imagery in the two largest and best-preserved summit cairns, cairn L on Carnbane West and cairn T on Carnbane East, is considered here.
Figure 3.3. The distribution of temples along the Loughcrew ridge. After McMann 1993.
Temple L is contained in the second largest cairn on the eastern end of the cluster of cairns on Carbane West. It is the most elaborately decorated of the thirteen temples in the group (Figure 3.4; Shee Twohig 1981: 211–13, figs. 229–29, pls. 30–31). The kerb, consisting of 42 stones, is remarkable for the use of relatively thin rectangular slabs riddled with shallow surface depressions as if the stones had been rough-picked all over their surfaces (Figure 3.5). These are, in effect, naturally ‘decorated’ slabs, with the best examples chosen to flank the southeast-facing entrance and bound the southern sector of the cairn, the most important area of the temple circumference or circuit. In the north and northeast sectors this type of ‘decorated’ stone is missing, and the kerbstones here have a more irregular and less distinctive shape.
Figure 3.4. The passage and chamber of Loughcrew temple L, showing the positions of the decorated orthostats. After Shee Twohig 1981: fig. 222.
Figure 3.5. Kerbstone in the southern part of the cairn of temple L, Loughcrew.
Thus, rough ‘picked’ stone surfaces, all undifferentiated in terms of the absence of any pattern, confront the observer moving around the outside circuit of the temple, ‘decoration’ that becomes lost in the area farthest away from the entrance. These stones require circulation past them in either a clockwise or counterclockwise fashion. They can never be seen all at once. They may be viewed at will from a greater or shorter distance away, and the observer looks down at their surfaces with the great cairn rising above them. In this high and windswept location these stones can alter and change rapidly in relation to the qualities of the light and the patterns of the weather.
The short, confined passage into temple L has four orthostats on each side, six of which (three on each side) have rough surfaces, some further enhanced by picking and deepening. These decorated passage orthostats are sparsely elaborated with motifs that often appear to be both partial and indistinct, and whose positioning alters from stone to stone. Entering the passage today requires stooping down and moving past the lower outer stones. The roof height then increases (the present roof is a restoration but probably approximates the height of the original) so that it is possible to stand upright and walk into the temple chamber from the inner part of the passage. The fourth stone and final passage orthostat on the right-hand side is covered with deeply picked cupmarks and depressions. The surface of this stone, riddled all over with hollows, has both the greatest visual and tactile impact despite the absence of geometric motifs on its surface. This and its opposite left orthostat are set inwards in order to constrict and narrow the passage so as to encourage bodily contact as one brushes past the stone surfaces to enter the chamber.
The chamber feels particularly large and spacious compared with the constricted passage, and its corbelled roof (its central part now replaced by concrete) may originally have been 5 m high. The chamber consists of a series of eight cells, two central ones on the left- and right-hand sides containing stones basins. Standing just inside the chamber space, having entered it from the passage, an observer can see only some of the decorated stone surfaces. All the designs on the western faces of the stones are concealed as one walks into the temple, but can be seen when exiting. So an observer has one perspective on the decorated stones on the way into the chamber and another on the way out. Some decorated stone surfaces are thus hidden or revealed in relation to the process of moving into and out of the temple chamber. In the passage, in order to see the decorated stones one must look either to the left or the right while moving forwards. Experiencing the designs within the chamber space requires an altogether much more complex process of bodily motion: moving forwards or backwards, turning to the right or the left, looking up and looking down, clambering over sillstones and entering between orthostats into recesses. Significantly, only some of the stone surfaces are decorated. Some are decorated on two faces, others on only one face, and there is no predictability with regard to which stone surfaces are decorated, what their form or size may be, what associations the images may have, or whether they are located on the upper, lower, or middle surfaces of the stones. One must look across at some images, down or up to see others. Just as there is a lack of predictability in image positioning, the cells of the temple chamber all differ in size and depth. The observer experiences a constantly changing sense of space and a kaleidoscope of image fields varying according to body position, motion, or stasis.
The most striking and elaborately decorated stone surfaces are not in the most obvious and easily visible places. From the passage entrance to the chamber, designs on the backstone of the opposite innermost cell (C9: Figures 3.4, 3.6) are only partially visible, and none are dramatic; on the right half are a damaged circle and some pick marks, on the left three large meandering picked lines and other indistinct meandering and U-forms. The rough, indistinct, and irregular nature of the images repeats the visual and tactile experience of most of the passage orthostats. This end cell is the least elaborately decorated of the three main cells. The decorated stones inside the cells to the left can only be seen when entering these cells and turning round. The most elaborately decorated stones are to the right of the chamber. This is a fairly predictable relationship between architecture and imagery in the Irish temples, where greater emphasis is often given to the right-hand recess, and occurs at Newgrange, Dowth, the eastern passage and chamber in Knowth 1 (see below), and at Knockroe (O’Sullivan 2004: 48; Cochrane 2005).Two in particular stand out from all the others. Stone C19 is surprising because it is the thinnest orthostat in the chamber and situated just to the right of the entrance. It is elaborately decorated on its western and eastern faces with lozenges and zigzag lines, which are deeply incised. The most elaborate stone of all forms the back of the main and largest centre right cell (C16: Figure 3.7). The dominant images are concentric circles and U-shaped forms surrounding central dots, with triangles and lozenges at the top and the far right. The central motifs on this stone appear to be conceived and executed as a whole and in relation to one another so as to create a definite and coherent pattern of relationships, which occurs nowhere else in temple L. The order and relative coherence of the pattern are striking and memorable.
Figure 3.6. Orthostat C9 in the back cell of temple L, Loughcrew. After Shee Twohig 1981: fig. 225.
Figure 3.7. Orthostat C16 in the right cell of temple L, Loughcrew. Line drawing after Shee Twohig 1981: fig. 226.
As one moves through the chamber and encounters the images, there is no sense of greater elaboration or complexity as one proceeds to the back of the temple. The main differentiation is between the left or south and right or north sides of the internal space. Shee Twohig has also emphasized (1996:76) this concentration of the most striking images around the two central cells, with basins indicating their importance in funerary and other rites (ibid.). There is also a sense here of a deliberate structuring of the images, insofar as the central cells on both the left- and right-hand sides with basin stones are dominated by circular designs, and there is an absence of lozenges or triangles on the left-hand and least elaborately decorated side of the chamber throughout the temple space. This asymmetry between the left-and right-hand sides is also found in the number of cells (three to the left and four to the right). Shee Twohig notes that the central left cell has a tall, white pillar stone set in front of it to the left of the opening, impressively illuminated by the dawn sunshine in early November and February (ibid.: 76).
Loughcrew: Temple T
Temple T (Figure 3.8; Shee Twohig 1981: 214–17; figs. 232–38, pls. 33–37) is situated on the flat central hilltop summit of the Loughcrew ridge on Carnbane East. It is by far the largest temple in a group of seven temples, with six, much smaller ‘satellite’ cairns situated around it. The roughly circular external kerb flattens and turns in towards the entrance on the eastern side. The kerbstones are particularly massive, with the two largest flanking the passage entrance. The third largest kerbstone, known as the Hag’s chair and located on the northern side, is decorated on its external face with pits and circular designs. A few other kerbstones may originally have been decorated, but the decoration is now lost through weathering. Many of the stones have surfaces similar to those of temple L.
The passage and chamber, on the eastern side of the cairn, occupies a small space compared with the massive cairn itself. The passage, which has been the subject of some undocumented reconstruction, faces due east. From the entrance, looking down the passage and directly into the chamber space beyond, the backstone of the deepest and final cell of the chamber is visible, with striking radial and circular motifs on it. Brennan reports that at the equinoxes, the rising sun shines directly into the temple after dawn, illuminating this stone and the sillstone between the passage and the chamber and gradually moving across and illuminating and animating some of the images in a striking manner (Brennan 1983: 90–100).
The passage is composed of five orthostats on either side. The third and fourth on either side are inset as jamb stones, creating a threshold between the inner and outer passage spaces and constricting entry into the innermost area before the chamber. Here a sillstone was shown on early plans by du Noyer (Shee Twohig 1996: 73). All the passage orthostats on the left-hand side are densely decorated. Two of those to the right lack graphic motifs. This contrast between the left- and right-hand sides is striking and important. Entering the passage, one must at first stoop. The first orthostat to the left is highly decorated with circular, radial, and pitted motifs covering its entire face, except at the very bottom. This stone has a smooth and flat face with deeply picked decoration. The stone opposite to the right is considerably rougher and is undecorated. The second orthostat to the left is also elaborately decorated on the upper part of the face. Opposite it the second orthostat to the right is decorated with less elaborate and densely packed motifs. Again this stone has a much rougher and more uneven surface. The third stone to the right contrasts with the two outer orthostats on this side of the passage, being a squat, undecorated pillar which feels rough to the touch. Opposite it, the third stone to the left, with elaborate meandering designs on its inner face, is again far smoother. So entry and movement down the passage involves not only a contrast between decorated and undecorated stones and a higher degree of elaboration of the decoration on the left, but also a rough (right) and smooth (left) tactile contrast between the stone surfaces themselves.
Figure 3.8. Temple T, Loughcrew cemetery. Plan showing the positions of the decorated orthostats in the chamber and passage. After Shee Twohig 1981: fig. 232.
Stooping lower through the inner door jamb and moving into the innermost and higher part of the passage, the final two orthostats to the left and right are by far the largest, and both possess significantly different surface decoration from the outer passage stones. The surfaces of both are dominated by deep holes enlarged and elaborated by picking. However, the stone to the left also has circular designs, related to and integrated with this surface of picked holes, whereas these are absent on the stone to the right and many of its surface holes are deeper (Figure 3.9). The presence of these hole-riddled stones immediately before the entrance to the chamber repeats the positioning of a similar stone to the right of the chamber entrance in Loughcrew temple L. The depth of the pits is what distinguishes these stones. The decoration elaborates the pits that preexisted on these stones in their unaltered form; and clearly the stones were chosen to be orthostats because of the original presence of these pits on their surfaces. They signal that the inner sanctum of the temple has been reached. Looking ahead and into the chamber, the high (0.6 m) sill-stone, over which one must clamber, is similarly decorated with picked decoration on its outer surface. Chamber orthostats C1 and C15 are angled to either side of the sillstone, but whereas C15 juts out into the passage, C1 is set back. There is a further contrast here in that the outer edge of C15 is rough and covered with deep pit decoration, whereas the outer edge of C1 is far smoother, with some indistinct linear picking.
Figure 3.9. Detail of cupmarks and enlarged holes on orthostat R5, temple T, Loughcrew.
Contrasting with the chamber space of temple L, with its eight irregular stalls, the chamber of temple T is far more symmetrical in form. It consists of four angled orthostats and four sillstones, creating a polygonal space with three distinct side cells, one to the left, another to the right, and a final cell at the back. Both the cells and the passage are clearly differentiated from the main chamber, and in the same manner, by high sillstones. As in temple L, there is an enormous sense of space and height formed by the rising corbelled roof of the chamber (2.5 m in height).Ahead, the decorated backstone of the innermost cell is visible along with decorated stones C5, C10, and sill 3 (see Figure 3.8). The sillstone has, on its right, a deeply picked radial design like those on the backstone of the cell. Stones C5 and C10 possess pit and circle decorations, but C5’s are far more elaborated. These stones effectively repeat the theme of deepening, elaborating on, and embellishing features already present on the stone surface, found on the innermost two passage stones. Turning round and looking to the left or right chamber, orthostats C1 and C15 contrast markedly. There is no decoration on C1, whereas C15, the tallest stone in the chamber, is covered with holes and depressions. The lower part of C15 has no obvious added decoration, while the upper part is covered with motifs that elaborate on the pits.
Moving to the left of the chamber and peering over the sillstone, the images in cell 1 become visible (with artificial illumination). This cell is rectangular, allowing one to stand inside it, but the optimal viewing distance is from outside the cell. The backstone has many circular designs that elaborate on deeply picked central pits. This stone has a smooth and fairly even surface, contrasting with the irregularity of the side stone to the left, C2, which has cracks, surface depressions, and pits elaborated and deepened with picking. The backstone has by far the most elaborate and greatest density of images in the cell. By contrast, the right stone of the cell, C4, has very little decoration, just a few circles elaborated around central pits. The dominant imagery is at the back of the cell in a very dark space within the temple. Without artificial illumination, it would only be possible to feel the motifs and pits.
The opposite cell, to the right of the chamber, has four orthostats rather than three and is polygonal in shape. Only the two outermost of these orthostats are decorated, splaying at angles to the chamber. C14 has a striking series of deeply picked geometric motifs on its smooth face. The undecorated backstone of the cell is rough, with many shallow pits covering its surface. C11 has lozenge forms and angular lines picked on the lower part of its face, some of which elaborate on cracks. Other motifs on both these stones again elaborate on natural pits. On the underside of the capstone there is a small area of decoration that remains hidden if one does not crouch or lie down and look up, consisting of parallel zigzag lines cutting across a crack.
The final and innermost cell constitutes both a surprise and contrast to those cells on the left and right of the chamber space. Its illuminated backstone, the motifs on which are only partially concealed from the chamber by the sillstone, has already been mentioned. But what is most striking about this stone is not only the relative ease with which the motifs on it may be seen, but their grouping, distinctiveness, and clarity of form. The motifs on this stone appear to be coherently ordered in relation to one another in a manner not present on any of the other passage or chamber orthostats. On the latter the positioning of many of the motifs appears to be a ‘response’ to features already found on the stones themselves—regular or irregular surfaces, holes, cracks, and depressions—making the overall design relationships appear somewhat haphazard. Stone C8 appears much more like a blank ‘canvas’ on which designs were executed where desired (Figure 3.10). The stone surface is exceptionally smooth. The flamboyant radial, star, and other geometric forms that decorate it have an exceptional clarity, standing out from rather than merging with the features of the natural stone surface—unlike on the other stone orthostats. Luminosity and clarity go hand in hand. The two flanking cell orthostats to the left and the right are far less elaborate, with comparatively little and rather indistinct decoration, acting as a foil for the visual elaboration of the backstone. The real surprise in this cell is the ‘secret’ decoration on the underside of the smooth, flat capstone, repeating the same types of images found on the backstone. To view these designs requires either stooping down and looking up or lying flat on one’s back. So the final chamber of the temple, and the deepest in relation to the external cairn, requires the greatest and most radical change in bodily posture in order to experience and encounter the motifs, which effectively dominate an observer who must experience them from below. The images force the subjugation of the body beneath. They, rather than the observer, are dominant.
The organization of the decorated stones in this temple is clearly designed to continually surprise the uninitiated observer. There are no repetitive or obvious themes. For example, while the backstones of cells 1 and 2 are decorated, that in cell 3 is not. Cell 1, unlike cells 2 and 3, has no decoration on the underside of the capstone. What one might expect from the experience of one of the cells is not repeated in another.
The manner in which the innermost part of the passage was originally bounded by sillstones on either side duplicates the structure of the three chamber cells. Effectively, the inner part of the passage constitutes a fourth cell, rectangular in shape like cell 1. So this temple can be envisaged as having cells or internal subdivisions orientated in relation to each of the cardinal directions. Two of these (the passage and end cell) are illuminated, those to the north and south or right and left, dark. From the perspective of the inner temple chamber, the passage entrance ‘cell’ has the external landscape beyond the temple as its ‘backstone’.
In comparison with the stones forming the passage and the chamber cells, the other chamber orthostats are relatively unelaborated with images. All the emphasis is on the front and very back spaces of the temple chamber. Two major kinds of images may be distinguished: those that elaborate on the preexisting surfaces of the stones, enlarging or deepening holes, impressions, and cracks; and those that are executed on a ‘blank’ surface (which occur primarily in the innermost cell), images that are alternatively either guided by, or imposed on, the stone surface. The only clear lozenge/lattice designs occur in the right cell, whereas circular designs are concentrated on the left-hand side of the passage and chamber, a similar arrangement to that encountered in temple L. There is no clear left/right distinction of the chamber space in terms of degree of motif elaboration either quantitatively or qualitatively—a major difference with temple L—and the end chamber of temple L is little elaborated in comparison with temple T. Both the structuring of the motifs and the bodily movements and postures required to experience them are very different in the two temples. Temple T has a much smaller, simpler, and more symmetrical chamber plan than temple L, but the forms of the motifs and their positioning are far more complex.
Figure 3.10. Graphic imagery on orthostat C8, temple T, Loughcrew. Chalked.
In temple T the left (south) side of the passage is more elaborated than the right. One prominent theme is the deepening of the decoration as one approaches the chamber space, with the deepest ‘cupmarks’ occurring on L5 and R5, the two innermost passage orthostats. Most are simply elaborations of preexisting pits and hollows in the stones, which were chosen for this reason. They were preinscribed. Interestingly, the kerbstones are relatively free of distinguishing holes and hollows and are undifferentiated and uniform in this respect. These depressions and hollows have an inherent ambiguity about them. Most were naturally present on the unaltered stone, but they have also been modified and created through picking. Some were created ‘from scratch’, but in most cases it is not possible to tell.
Temples in the Bend of the Boyne
The Boyne River is the longest and most significant watercourse on the east coast of Ireland between the Wicklow Mountains to the south and the Mourne Mountains to the north and is roughly equidistant from both. Three huge Neolithic temples, Dowth, Newgrange, and Knowth, and their smaller satellites are enclosed by a dramatic meander in the Boyne.
The temples are similar in size and appearance, each consisting of a roughly circular and flat-topped cairn, over 80 m in diameter, 12 to 15 m in height, with an external kerb containing one or more passages and chambers. Set only a few kilometres apart, Newgrange is centrally located, Dowth is to the northeast, and Knowth to the northwest. They dominate the surrounding landscape and contain by far the greatest concentration of megalithic ‘art’ in Europe. Each is associated with a number of smaller or ‘satellite’ temples, seventeen at Knowth, three or five at Newgrange (including two other mounds in the valley below), and two at Dowth. Besides these, other temples are located in the bend of the Boyne. In all, 31 definite and nine possible sites have been identified (Stout 2002: 22) (Figure 3.11). Temples began to be constructed in this landscape around 3400 B.C., and radiocarbon dates show that the three great temples are roughly contemporary and were built towards the end of the sequence of temple construction, around 3200 B.C. (Eogan 1999; Cooney 2000: 153 ff.). This account considers the imagery found on the structural stones of the three great temples in relation to their wider landscape setting.
Figure 3.11. The distribution of temples in the bend of the Boyne in relation to the local topography. After Cooney 2000: fig. 2.3.
Today the tidal reach of the Boyne is to the Curly Hole at the junction of the Boyne and Mattock rivers. Five and a half thousand years ago, the sea was 4 m above its present level and may have extended somewhat farther to the west, at least up to Glenmore House only 1 km downstream from Dowth (F. Mitchell 1995). The temples, then, were located just beyond the highly significant point on the river where saltwater mingles with freshwater. The river, were it not for the construction of numerous modern weirs, would have been navigable as far as Slane to the east and beyond. Each of the temples is sited on the summit of a rise to the north of the river, and all are intervisible with one another. Dowth to the east occupies the western end of a low ridge, Newgrange a central but lower rise in the landscape, a hill island surrounded by lower ground on all sides, and Knowth, like Dowth, at the western end of a low west–east ridge, with the land sloping gently away to the south and north. Only 500 m to the west of Knowth there is a steep river cliff down to the river Boyne.
A visitor coming to the Boyne temples today does so by road, arriving at the visitor centre, crossing a footbridge over the Boyne, before being bussed to the sites. This has the advantage of emphasizing the significance of this river, down which an outsider in the prehistoric past is most likely to have passed. From the sea the Boyne follows a tidal course running approximately east to west for 12 km before swinging sharply to the south. It then flows for 3 km to the south before swinging back again on a westerly course, then looping to the north before swinging again to the west, creating a great arc within which the temples are situated. In terms of this great southern arc of the river, Dowth is situated at the eastern end, Knowth at the western end, and Newgrange in the middle. From the eastern start of the loop at the Curly Hole to just beyond Dowth, the Boyne passes through a narrow wooded valley with steep banks on either side. Following the river course, both Dowth and Newgrange first come into view at Mill, just a little downstream from the present visitor centre. From the river one passes the great mound of Dowth without noticing it, but it can be seen looking back towards the sea at this point, with Newgrange visible to the west.
Continuing to follow the course of the river, Newgrange becomes ever more prominent and dramatic on the skyline, and it is evident that the main façade and entrance area to this temple is orientated to face towards the river at the point at which the flatlands are widest and most extensive to its south (Figure 3.12). While Dowth slips by unnoticed by a river-borne observer, Newgrange is seen to dramatic effect. Continuing along the Boyne, Newgrange slips out of view at approximately the same point as Knowth can first be seen, looking to the north. Knowth is visible along a 700-m stretch before disappearing out of view at the point at which the river swings north to flow within a constricted valley. One slips past and beneath Knowth, like Dowth, unnoticed at the point at which the river is closest to it.
Figure 3.12. View to Newgrange from the river Boyne.
Newgrange is thus the only temple that can be seen from either the east or the west from an extensive 3-km stretch of the river. By contrast, views of Dowth are extremely restricted and relate to downstream movement, while Knowth is visible both upstream and downstream of its location from short stretches but not where the river is closest to it. Access to both Dowth and Knowth from the closest point on the river is restricted and difficult because of the steep river cliffs below them. Newgrange, however, is readily accessible across the low but slowly rising ground from the river up to it. Here there is a complete absence of river cliffs north of the river. These are marked and well defined south of the river along its entire course from the Curly Hole to Slane, far to the west of the bend in the Boyne. The river is not visible from the entrances to either Dowth or Knowth, unlike Newgrange. There is thus a special and important relationship between this, the central temple, and the river.
A View from the Temples
This landscape is totally unlike that seen from the Loughcrew temples. From there the view is to distant mountains. Here, in the bend of the Boyne, the distant horizon is much more limited by low and indistinct ridges to the southeast, north, and east. From the top of the cairns the most extensive views are due south to the Wicklow Mountains. To the west or east one looks along the Boyne valley, which is the most important and distinctive feature of the near landscape. To the west, the Hill of Slane marks the limits of the horizon from Knowth. Interestingly, this view to the west interlocks with that from the Loughcrew cairns looking east. To the northeast the sea can just be seen in the far distance from the tops of the Knowth and Dowth cairns, but not from Newgrange. The local hills and ridges give a sense of circular enclosure to the landscape surrounding all three temples. From Knowth and Dowth there are two main windows or openings to a wider world, one northeast to the sea, the other south to the Wicklow Mountains. The sea cannot be seen from Newgrange because the view is blocked by the ridge on which Dowth stands. Instead, from here the view of river cliff visible on the south side of the Boyne uniquely creates a sense of an embayment, a semicircular amphitheatre in front of the temple, which is not apparent at either Dowth or Knowth.
Dowth
Two passages and chambers are located in the western side of the cairn of Dowth (Figure 3.13; O’Kelly and O’Kelly 1983: figs. 10–26). Exposed stones in the kerb surrounding the cairn are now present in the southern and eastern sections. They are noticeably irregular in shape and size and somewhat rough greywacke blocks. Decoration is recorded on the surfaces of fifteen stones (ibid.: 148). The main motifs are zigzags, spirals, circles, and cupmarks and/or enlarged hollows. The most distinctive and striking stone in the Dowth kerb (K51) is decorated by a remarkable series of radial motifs, where there is an in-turn of the façade facing due east towards the equinoxal sunrise. We do not know whether or not this marks the entrance to another passage and chamber, but the solar imagery (see below) on the stone seems to strongly suggest the possibility. These images are dramatically illuminated by the rising sun on the winter solstice. The back of K51 is also covered with concealed picked motifs, circular designs, and rather more amorphous picked shapes. One of the other most highly decorated and visually dominant kerbstones is K1, outside the passage entrance to Dowth South. Motifs on the other stones—apart from K52 and K53, on which a series of large circular motifs occur—are all rather small and discrete, with no obvious structured arrangement. One, K16, has diffuse picking over much of the surface. Many of the stones are not decorated, and there are extensive gaps between those that are. Walking around the kerb from the entrance to Dowth South at a distance from which one can see the motifs on the stone surfaces, one notices that the number of kerbstones visible around the kerb varies from two or three to seven, and these may include undecorated stones. So the visual impression of the kerb, even allowing for the effects of weathering, appears to be fragmented and constantly changing, with little sense of coherence or structuring of the decorated stones in relation to one another or the landscape beyond, except in relation to the important winter solstice axis.
Figure 3.13. Plan of the Dowth temple. Kerbstones are numbered. After O’Kelly and O’Kelly 1983.
Dowth South
The two external passage orthostats of Dowth South are distinctly angled, restricting the space of the passage. One must clamber over the external decorated kerb stone and stoop down in order to enter. Moving into the passage one becomes aware of a distinctive trough in the centre of the face of the first right-hand orthostat, together with two wavy lines. This acts as a key for understanding the rest of the temple. The passage roof space gradually rises to the chamber beyond. Beyond the first pair of passage orthostats, the passage widens. The surface of R2 (see Figure 3.14) is quite rough and abraded with cracks. On it there is a small circular motif three-quarters of the way up the stone. Above, one must look up to see carved lines on a roofing stone. Two further passage orthostats narrow the entrance to the chamber, which is also defined by a sillstone over which one must step. On entering the circular chamber it is possible to stand up fully, and there is a sense of great volume and space. Decoration on the three central back passage orthostats, C6–C8 (see Figure 3.15), is visible ahead. This temple is orientated to the midwinter sunset, and on the shortest days of the year, from late November to mid January, at around 3 pm the dying rays of the sun move down the passage and dramatically illuminate the decorated chamber orthostats at the back (Brennan 1983: 82–85; Moroney 1999). The beam of the sun is so strong that the whole chamber is lit up. For the rest of the year, without artificial illumination the presence of the graphic imagery would be more easily felt than seen. This tactile contrast between picked and unpicked stone surfaces at Dowth appears to be as, if not more, important than the character of the motifs. There is a great contrast between the smooth areas and the picked lozenges, triangles, and lines on C7.
Figure 3.14. Plan of Dowth South showing positions of decorated orthostats, sunbeams, and reflections. After Moroney 1999.
The surface of C7 has a curved outer surface. Acting as a mirror, this reflects the sunlight into a wedge-shaped cell on the right-hand side of the chamber, usually a dark and hidden space. The light is reflected onto the right-hand orthostat (C12), on which there is a profusion of carvings and picked areas. In February the sun’s rays also illuminate the motifs on the first right passage orthostat, R1 (Moroney 1999:41).
Not only does the sun illuminate the most important passage and chamber orthostats, there are also changing light effects:
The colour of the sun shining into this circular chamber … and onto the stones is a bright beam at the beginning of this solar pattern in winter. The light turns to a warm yellow and around the time of the solstice changes to a golden pink colour. As the days lengthen again the sun rays are more honey-coloured and then become a bright, white light in February. (ibid.: 14)
Figure 3.15. Graphic designs on orthostats C6–C8 at the back of the chamber of Dowth South. After O’Kelly and O’Kelly 1983: figs. 24 and 25, and Moroney 1999.
As on C7, the smooth surface of the stone on C12 contrasts with the picked areas. The natural surface of this stone is yellowish and somewhat reflective, but the picked areas absorb and dull the light, creating a dark greenish hue. In the process of picking, earlier motifs have been partially or totally obliterated. Others were highlighted by this process, enhancing them. The substantial areas dulled by surface picking now absorb light reflected from the sun’s rays deflected from C7. All the emphasis is to the right and the back of this temple. Only the right passage and chamber orthostats are decorated, and the importance of the right-hand side is architecturally emphasized by the presence of the decorated cell. Unlike the chamber space, the back of the cell is undecorated. The left-hand orthostat lacks decoration but is covered all over its surface with coarse picking, roughening and emphasizing its surface. In addition, two substantial hollows in this stone have been picked deeper. By far the most dramatic stones are the two orthostats C6 and C7 at the back of the chamber.
Dowth North
The original entrance to the passage at Dowth North (Figure 3.16) is now blocked and altered, but facing southwest it too was orientated to the setting sun on the winter solstice. The passage is considerably longer than in Dowth South, and the chamber space more complex, cruciform in plan, with three side cells and a further extension, and elaboration of the right-hand cell. As in Dowth South, decoration on many of the chamber and passage orthostats is either absent or sparse. Only three of the passage orthostats are decorated, and by far the most elaborate is on the right-hand side.
As usual, the experience of the passage is of constricted space and a gradual diminution of light as one approaches the voluminous chamber. All three decorated orthostats occur at the point at which a sillstone demarcates the outer from the inner part of the passage. The distinct angling of the fourth right passage orthostat by the sillstone is designed so that the motifs on its face, deeply picked circles and linear grooves, stand out. Immediately above the sillstone, a roof lintel has some picked designs. Beyond the first passage sill, one can stand up in the passage, which gradually rises towards the chamber space. Two further sills separate the innermost area of the passage from the chamber. The remainder of the passage is undecorated. It is only when passing down the final section of the passage and entering the chamber that any further decorated stones become visible.
Figure 3.16. Plan and elevation of Dowth North showing the positions of the decorated orthostats After O’Kelly and O’Kelly 1983: fig. 6.
A huge stone basin now occupies half of the main chamber space. It is likely that its original position was in the large right-hand recess, which is alone of sufficient size for it to fit (O’Kelly and O’Kelly 1983:152). Four massive orthostats, all different in height, shape, and form, dominate the internal chamber space. C1, sparsely decorated with a circular picked motif, is a rectangular pillar. C7 is widened and bulbous at the top with a broad internal face. C13 has a distinctive flat face; C19 is a tall column. The orthostats C7 and C19 are the most elaborately decorated in the temple. C19 has complex circular, meandering, and linear designs. C7 has at least twenty natural hollows with circular and radial designs. These flank either side of the passage, and to see the decoration one must either turn round or progress around the central rock basin. Neither would ever be directly illuminated by the sun. Entering the chamber one becomes aware of cells leading off it on three sides. Only the left cell has motifs on one of the stones. The right cell is the most architecturally elaborated and deep, with a series of annexes leading off it, but there is only one orthostat with a small area of irregular picking.
There is a great distinction between Dowth South and North in terms of architectural form, the kinds of motifs present, and the organization of internal space within the temple chambers, suggesting very different purposes and activities. They were perhaps visited and experienced sequentially. If this was the case, the experience of one temple would establish a false set of expectations with regard to the next. Decorative emphasis in Dowth South is on the right-hand side and in the cell. In Dowth North it is around the central chamber space. There are no stones in Dowth North with large areas of surface picking, compared with Dowth South. The structured ordering of lozenges and the like on chamber stone C8 has no counterpart in Dowth North. The latter is internally far more complex in terms of the cell architecture.
Newgrange, the central temple of the three great megalithic monuments in the Boyne valley, is situated on the highest point of a low hill (Figure 3.17; M. O’Kelly 1982; C. O’Kelly 1982: figs 3–6, 20, 24–55, 60–82; pl. XII). It is about 1 km to the north of the river Boyne and 15 km from its mouth to the east. The cairn has a flat top 32 m in diameter, which is 11 m high on the south side and 13 m high on the north side (M. O’Kelly 1982: 21). A kerb of 97 massive slabs surrounds the somewhat irregularly shaped circular cairn, varying in diameter between 78 and 85 m. Thirty-one decorated stones in the kerb are documented. These are concentrated in the southern sector of the cairn to the left (west) and right (east) of the passage entrance, with a few in the northwest part of the circumference and one in the northeast. O’Kelly’s excavations only fully exposed a third of the cairn perimeter, so this represents a minimum number. Some may have hidden decoration on their back surfaces or tops. The entrance stone outside the passage is by far the most elaborate, its surface covered with rows of spirals, arcs, and interlocking lozenges (Figure 3.18A). This was carved in situ before the kerbstones on either side were placed in position (C. O’Kelly 1982: 149). The kerbstones to the left and right of it are covered all over their surfaces with pick dressing. The effect is to almost obliterate the other designs on these stones—namely, zigzag lines on K2 and spirals on K97. Compared with the entrance stone, the motifs on those on either side are irregular and cover only a tiny part of the surface area. The picking, which almost hides these earlier motifs, must have been undertaken to further emphasize the extraordinary entrance stone so as to better act as a foil or framing device for it.
Figure 3.17. Plan of Newgrange, with kerbstones numbered. After M. O’Kelly 1982: fig. 3.
Figure 3.18. Kerbstones at Newgrange with ‘plastic’ decoration. A: the entrance stone K1. B: K67. C: K52. For locations, see Figure 3.17. After C. O’Kelly 1982: figs. 24, 28, and 29.
The motifs on the front surfaces of the other decorated kerbstones at the front of the cairn to the left of the entrance are slight and irregular. Some occur on the front faces, others on the tops of the stones. Hollows on some have been deepened. Minor picked areas occur on some, but here the intention was not to obliterate or obscure the motifs. Only a small proportion of the total surface area has any decoration at all. Four stones do possess striking and elaborate decoration. This is all concealed on their back surfaces, their front and visible faces being either totally plain or bearing decoration of an indistinct and irregular character. The same is true for the appearance of the decorated stones to the right of the entrance, except that only one has concealed decoration on the back face.
K67 in the northwest perimeter of the cairn is the only stone in this section of the cairn perimeter that has decoration on its front surface (Figure 3.18B). The decoration is in bold ‘plastic style’ (see discussion below), occurring in two panels, with conjoined spirals and picked lozenges and triangles to the left. No other decorated stones are visible from it. There are four decorated stones in the northwest sector of the cairn directly opposite the passage entrance. Of these, K52 is the most striking, and like the passage entrance stone, it was carved in situ. After the entrance stone (K1), K52 is the most striking and visually powerful stone in the temple perimeter (Figure 3.18C). The only other stone of similar quality and power in the kerb is K67. Unlike K1 or K67, K52 has a surface riddled with hollows that are skilfully incorporated into the design field. The kerbstone flanking it to the left, K53, has no decoration. It is one of only two yellow-brown sandstone blocks incorporated into the kerb, the rest being of the local grey-green greywacke (see discussion of the Knowth kerb below). The stone to the right, K51, is comparatively little decorated, with motifs of a completely different character. Interestingly, K51 has a fine, smooth surface, much easier to carve than the surface of K52 which is riddled with holes. The irregular surface of K52 was deliberately chosen by its carver and may have been incorporated into the kerb precisely because of its irregular surface.
Standing any distance away from the kerb of Newgrange, the only visible decorated stones are K1, K67, and K52. These are all in completely different sectors of the cairn circuit, stones that are not intervisible. A distant but erroneous impression of the Newgrange kerb would be that it contains only three decorated stones. If the passage entrance was concealed by its original blocking stone, the impression given would be of a cairn with a continuous circuit, with three entrances marked by visually dominant stones. The finest stones in the kerb in terms of both shape and size are all found in the southern part of the perimeter on either side of the entrance. In other sectors of the perimeter, the kerbstones are smaller and much more irregular in shape and size (apart from those in the immediate vicinity of K67 and K52), further emphasizing the importance of the fine stones in the southern sector and the passage entrance area. Walking around immediately outside the kerb circuit, as at Dowth, varying numbers of neighbouring kerbstones are visible, depending on the curvature of the cairn at any particular viewpoint: from some places, two or three kerbstones are visible on either side of the stone the observer is facing; in exceptional positions, six stones can be seen to the right and only two or three to the left. The norm is to experience a visual field of only two or three stones on either side of the stone in front of the observer, before the rest of the kerbstones fall out of sight. Walking close to the curve restricts the visual field of contiguous stones to between five and seven. From K52 it is possible to see as far as K55 to the right and K49 to the left, a field of vision that includes all the decorated stones in this part of the kerb perimeter. Standing in front of the entrance stone, K1, it is possible to see as far as K4 to the left and K94 to the right. However, the only motifs visible on these kerbstones are those on K2 and K97, all of which have been virtually obliterated by pick dressing.
The kerb around the outside of Newgrange, as at Dowth and Knowth, is continuous. The passage entrance is only partly visible when looking over the highly decorated stone outside it. Entering the temple itself would require clambering over this stone, about 1.2 m high, and stooping under the passage entrance lintel before walking down the passage towards the chamber. The 19-m-long passage faces southeast. It is flanked by 22 orthostats on the left (west) side and 21 on the right (east) side. Those nearest the chamber are tallest, 2 m or more above the ground. The passage is roofed by massive slabs resting either on the tops of the orthostats or on corbels above them. The passage is in two sections, the outer lower, the inner higher. Beyond orthostats R12 and L13, the roof gradually rises towards the chamber, reaching a height of 3.5 m (Figure 3.19). The floor of both the passage and chamber follows the rise of the hill on which the temple stands, so the floor level of the chamber is almost 2 m higher than that at the entrance. Moving down the passage one becomes aware of a gradually changing sense of place, with both the floor and the roof rising up, the latter more quickly. The passage is not dead straight but meanders a little, bending slightly to the left and then to the right and again to the left before the chamber is reached. The narrow and constricted passage, now with some orthostats leaning inwards, is 1 m wide, permitting only a single person to move through it. The bodily sensation is of remarkable constriction despite the changing height of the roof space; and by contrast, the corbelled chamber appears huge. Cruciform in shape, it contains three side recesses or cells, one to the left, another at the back, and one to the right, measuring up to 6.5 m along the longest stretch of the cruciform shape, all with stone basins. The largest cell is the one to the right; this has two basin stones, one inside the other (Figure 3.20). The corbelled vault, closed by a single capstone, rises 6 m above the floor. As is well known, the chamber floor is directly illuminated by the rising sun on the winter solstice, which shines through a unique, specially constructed roof box above the passage entrance and crosses the floor of the main chamber as far as the back recess (M. O’Kelly 1982: 123 ff.). Light entering from the passage entrance itself extends as far back as orthostat L19 and illuminates the three spirals on it (Brennan 1983: 80). Both these light sources could be closed off or opened at will, the passage by a large slab now set beside the temple entrance and the roof box slit by the movement of two quartz blocks (M. O’Kelly 1982: 123).
Figure 3.19. Plan and elevation of the Newgrange passage and chamber, showing the positions of stones with graphic designs. After M. O’Kelly 1982: fig. 4.
Figure 3.20. The stone basin in the right cell of the Newgrange chamber which rests inside another.
Figure 3.21. Newgrange: Passage orthostats L19 and L22. After C. O’Kelly 1982: fig. 42. Photograph shows detail of upper part of L19.
Standing at the passage entrance, the first decorated stone that is visible is the front face of the lintel above the roof box, with its expertly picked lattice design. The back of the corbel supporting the roof box lintel is engraved with motifs including circles and radial designs that were always hidden after its construction. All the passage orthostat stones are pick dressed over all, or most, of their main faces, making them appear uniform and undifferentiated in both a visual and a tactile sense as one moves down the passage. There is an absence of any other visually arresting decoration except in a few cases. The only two orthostats with any visually striking or memorable designs are stones L19 and L22, which occur at or near the end of the passage on the left-hand side (Figure 3.21). Other stones display a little decoration, but this is either partially obscured through later surface picking, hidden beneath ground level, or only present on the partially exposed side rather than on the front and main faces of the stones. Some motifs are positioned towards the very top or bottom of the main faces of the stones. In the absence of detailed, well-lighted examination of the stones, the impression of the passage is of orthostats picked all over but otherwise having only two decorated stones, a puritanical simplicity of form and design. Not only are motifs picked over to completely or partially obscure them, but so also are surface hollows, depressions, and previously picked grooves. ‘Natural’ or ‘cultural’ features marking or distinguishing individual stones are all treated in the same manner, creating an overwhelming impression of uniformity.
R3 has picking all over except near the base, where there are circular decorations on an unpicked area of the stone. Most of this ornament is concealed below floor level. Some of the motifs just above the floor are also obscured by subsequent pick dressing and only partly discernible. R5 has a row of tiny triangles at the very top of the stone. R6 has some pronounced hollows on its surface and is covered with picking. R8 has lozenges towards the top of the stone, virtually obliterated by overall picking. R10 has two lozenges in slight relief on the lower part of the stone, which is picked all over; R12 has picked-over grooves and a small panel of decoration on the south side rather than on the main face of the stone. The main faces of L12 and L13 have overall picking. A few motifs occur on the sides but are only partly visible. L15 is picked all over except at the top, which is smooth and decorated with three deeply picked lozenges. L19 is picked all over at the top of the stone and over much of the bottom. The central part protrudes slightly and, because of the absence of picking, has three deeply engraved spirals and zigzag lines, which appear prominently. Four other spirals at the base of this stone are partially or completely obscured by picking, and other picked lines are beneath ground level. This is the first dramatic stone in the entire passage. L20 has spiral motifs below the ground surface. R18 is decorated with some zigzag bands on part of its face, which can be traced by the fingers. R19 has two small lozenges towards the top; L20 has motifs below ground level. R20 possesses some natural hollows deepened and emphasized by pick dressing covering much of its surface; R21 has picked over grooves and hollows on the main face. L21 opposite has two linear bands of picking running down the centre of the stone. L22, the final passage orthostat on the left, has an incised pattern on a smooth, unpicked surface at the top of the stone and an area with zigzag bands and triangles in an area at the base of the stone which is not picked.
If C. O’Kelly’s documentation were not available, none of the decorations on the stones—apart from the panels of designs on the unpicked areas of L19 and L22—would likely be seen or felt by a casual observer. None of these motifs are especially easy to see, owing to both their position and/or the subsequent picking of the orthostat surfaces. To experience them at all requires very careful visual and tactile examination of the stone surface, looking across and up or bending down. It also requires either being shown or knowing where to look. The final intention appears to have been to create a passage that was remarkably plain except for the presence of the surface picking enhancing every stone.
Entering into the chamber, the backstone of the end cell is visible ahead. No decoration is apparent in the chamber space, apart from picked areas on the side and front faces of some of the stones. The only visible motif is a ‘wheat sheaf’ motif on the east side of the right stone in the left recess. Moving farther into the chamber space and turning to the left, orthostat C1 is remarkable because of the presence of deep grooves running down the front face of the stone with picking in between. The left cell has highly visible and dramatic decoration on the backstone and on the left side. The backstone has no overall picking but has three dominant spirals in its centre. The orthostat to the left has one dominant spiral with picked and unpicked lines of lozenges above, but the latter are partially concealed because of the shape of the stone, the surface of which is smooth. The right side of this cell has a small picked area near the outer face that partially obliterates one of two spirals situated low down on it. Otherwise the surface is smooth, with only a few other picked lines present. Orthostat C5 has distinctive hollows on its main face and small areas of picked dressing. The back recess is very little decorated. Picking has obliterated one of two small lozenges near the top of the backstone, and double triangles are virtually concealed in the top right-hand corner; otherwise the cell is undecorated. Orthostat C10, on the left side of the back cell, is the only dramatically decorated stone, with a three-spiral motif picked on an undressed surface of the stone quite low down the main face (Figure 3.22). Above is an extensive area of picking, leaving untouched a faint scratched line of four lozenges but irregularly extending as far as the three-spiral motif. The motifs on this stone can only be seen when looking into the cell and not from the main chamber. By contrast, C11, whose main side faces out into the chamber, is undecorated apart from one small, irregular, and indistinct oval-shaped motif near the floor. The right cell has no decoration on the main faces of the stones facing into it, but these have picking either all over their surfaces or in bands. The only motifs are small areas with picked lozenges high up the western edges of C15 and C16, which are in a very obscure and unexpected position.
Figure 3.22. Newgrange: Chamber orthostat C10 with three-spiral motif. After C. O’Kelly 1982: fig. 47. Photograph shows detail of spiral and area picking above it.
The visual impression of the chamber space thus continues the theme introduced in the passage: relatively little elaboration. There are only three stones, all decorated with spirals, that might be described as striking or dramatic. Only one of these is visible from the centre of the chamber space looking in any direction. To see the spirals in cell 1 requires looking into it; those in cell 2 are best seen looking out towards the passage (Shee Twohig 2000: 95). However, entering the right cell and looking upwards at the underside of the capstone, one discovers an amazing sight. The stone is covered with spirals and interlocking circular and lozenge designs in baroque elaboration (Figure 3.23). The corbels on this cell immediately under the roofstone are similarly elaborately decorated. While these can be seen from a standing position, the roofstone is best appreciated lying down and looking up. Even so, some of the decoration is still not visible, as it disappears under the roof corbels.
Figure 3.23. Graphic designs on part of the capstone of the right-hand chamber cell, Newgrange.
The effect of the light penetrating into the chamber on the midwinter solstice through the roof box is to dramatically illuminate a space that is normally very dark. Various details of the motifs in the chamber and side cells then become illuminated by the reflected light in a manner only possible through artificial illumination at any other time. The beam from the roof box lasts for exactly 17 minutes (M. O’Kelly 1982: 124).
Besides the stones already mentioned, certain other of the passage roofing stones and corbels in the chamber are decorated. Two corbels immediately behind the roof box have much decoration on their upper faces which was completely hidden during the Neolithic construction of the passage. Two other roofstones with hidden decoration were placed at the junction between the passage and chamber roofs; these were discovered during the excavation and restoration of the temple (M. O’Kelly 1982: 99). The last roof slab over the opening from the passage to the chamber has picked lines of triangles visible from inside the chamber looking out. All this decoration, mostly hidden, emphasizes important transitional points from the inner to the outer part of the passage and from the passage to the chamber.
In Newgrange the visually dominant visual images occur on the left passage orthostats: L19 with three spirals; on the three stones in the left recess, each with one to three spirals; on orthostat C10, with its unique three-spiral motif; and on the highly elaborate roofstone of the right (or east) cell. This again has a dominant central spiral motif together with circular motifs and ellipses. The emphasis on the spiral is the unique and memorable signature of this temple (see discussion below). The emphasis placed on the right-hand cell of the chamber and the left-hand side of the passage repeats the situation found in Loughcrew temple L.
Knowth (Site 1)
The third great temple in the Boyne valley, Knowth, contains two passages and chambers (Figure 3.24; Eogan 1984; 1986; 1996; 1997; 1998; Eogan and Aboud 1990). The original entrances and about 5 m of the passages to both were destroyed during the Iron Age and in the early Christian era. They were orientated to the east and west and, almost meeting at the centre of the cairn, were probably related to the equinoxal sunrise and sunset, although this has not been conclusively demonstrated. The western passage and chamber is of undifferentiated form, lacking side cells or recesses. The eastern one has a cruciform-shaped chamber like that at Newgrange.
Figure 3.24. Plan of the Knowth Temple Cemetery. After Stout 2002: fig. 8.
The cairn containing the chambers and passages is smaller and lower than that at Newgrange. Almost 10 m high, it is more oval than circular in shape, measuring 80 m west to east and 95 m north to south. It is surrounded by eighteen smaller satellite temples, except in the southeast area of the cairn circuit, and their absence here may be a result of differential destruction. The kerb is continuous, curving in slightly at the entrances to the western and eastern passages. As at Newgrange, one would have to clamber over the entrance kerbstones to enter the interiors, which, also as at Newgrange, might originally have had removable passage blocking stones. Originally the kerb had 127 stones, significantly more than at Newgrange, but three are now missing. There is one original gap in the kerb on the northern side where the cairn was built up against an earlier temple (no. 16) whose entrance was remodelled, and an indented area on the northern side devised to avoid another earlier temple (no. 13) (Eogan 1986: 46). Of the 124 surviving kerbstones, 95 are of greywacke, green cleaved grit, or similar rock; eighteen are of limestone, nine of sandstone. There is thus considerably more variety in the type of stone used to construct the kerb than at Newgrange.
Grey-green greywacke is the hardest and most regular of these rocks in terms of surface, texture, and shape. It has few cracks and fissures or cavities and hollows. By contrast, the limestone, grey to white in colour, has a much more irregular and fissured surface and contains many micro-fossils. The sandstone is a pinky brown, much softer, and characterised in places by numerous erosion pits and hollows. The greywacke provides a harder and more even surface for carving and is also more resistant to weathering.
Most of the kerbstones are oblong in shape, averaging 2.5 m long and up to 1.2 m high, with the largest used near the temple entrances. Great care was taken to ensure a uniform profile and equalisation of height, with sockets being dug for some stones and others sitting on a foundation of small stones built up on the old land surface (ibid.). Significantly smaller stones were used on the northern side near temples 13 and 14, where they are only 30 cm high and on average 1.75 m long. Sandstone and limestone blocks occur throughout the kerb perimeter but are particularly concentrated in the northern and southern sectors, rather than to the west and east where the temples are situated.
Because the kerb has marked irregularity in the degrees of its curves, different numbers of kerbstones become visible as one walks around immediately outside its perimeter. At some points, long stretches of kerbstones are visible; at others only two or three stones can be seen in either direction. For example, walking clockwise from stone K11 outside the entrance to the eastern passage, it is possible to see K10, K9, and part of K8 to the right and up to K16 to the left. From K23 three stones are visible to the right, two to the left. From K74, the entrance to the western passage, three stones are visible to the right and five to the left. Along straighter stretches of the kerb along the southwest perimeter and along the western side, between ten and fifteen kerbstones may be visible. In other places, where the kerb switches direction, as few as three or four can be seen. From 50 percent of the kerbstones, between five and eight other stones are visible in total.
Quite obviously, there is no point at which the entire kerb is visible at Knowth, however far away one stands. Walking beside it, there is a constantly changing visual perspective of this stone façade and of the qualities of the stones themselves—colour, form, texture, and their changing relationships and the designs inscribed on them. Looking at the kerb, one’s attention is always directed at the stones themselves, to the exclusion of the wider landscape. They become, in effect, a circular conceptual landscape in abstract representation. Both entrance stones are only slightly inset from the rest of the cairn, with no pronounced forecourt areas as at Loughcrew cairns L and T. This gives a sense of a continuum, a never-ending circuit. Because of the positions of the surrounding satellite temples, the landscape beyond Knowth can be experienced only from the top of the mound.
The Knowth kerb is lavishly decorated with bold, visually striking, and often symmetrically arranged motifs. Of the kerbstones, at least 90 (73%) have decoration. Three stones are missing, another four badly damaged. Undecorated stones are concentrated in the vicinity of satellite temples 13 and 14 on the north part of the kerb, where the stones are much smaller and obviously less important. O’Sullivan has noted a general increase in the lengths of the kerbstones from the north and south towards the west and east entrance areas of the temple, with the distribution of the images following this general pattern (O’Sullivan 1998:45; 2004: 47). This decoration was meant to be seen. Of 123 kerbstones fully examined by Eogan, decoration occurs only on the backs of eleven and is ‘restricted in range’ (Eogan 1986: 150). There is nothing comparable to the backs of the elaborately decorated stones hidden in the Newgrange kerb. All but one are decorated with line picking, incision occurs on six, and scattered pick marking occurs on nine (ibid.: 151). Some stones are decorated on their top surfaces, but the major and most visually striking motifs are on the front faces of the stones. It is important to emphasize the sheer variety of the decorated surfaces. Although the range of motifs employed is somewhat limited and repetitive, the manner and style with which they are positioned and related to one another on the stones is unique. There are no two identical stones in the Knowth kerb. One passes in front of an ever-changing sequence of images. As some image fields on individual and adjacent stones come into view, others slip out of sight; figure and ground are constantly changing as one walks past the stones. Many stones have large and visually dominant motifs, which can be seen from some distance away from the kerb. Whereas the majority of the kerbstones at Dowth and Newgrange appear to be undecorated from a distance, the reverse is true at Knowth. Moreover, most motifs on the Knowth curve are not picked over so as to obliterate them, unlike those on either side of the Newgrange entrance stones. The Knowth kerb presents a striking visual kaleidoscope, truly one of the wonders of Neolithic Europe.
While some stones that have no decoration today might have been decorated in the past (mainly the softer limestone and sandstone blocks), the presence of decorated and undecorated stones in the kerb—of greywacke, limestone, and sandstone, with very different forms, surfaces, colours, and textures—does appear to be significant in defining discrete and related visual fields along the kerb. That is, the undecorated stones act as a frame bordering sequences of decorated blocks. The sensory contrasts and different sources of origin of the stones seem to be of great significance, a phenomenon which also occurs at the Knockroe temple in county Kilkenny (O’Sullivan 1993; 2004: 47).
Eogan has identified six framed panels around the Knowth kerb and suggests that they are strategically placed. Three are opposite the entrances to the satellite temples 4, 14, and 15; another is the entrance area to the eastern temple, and another faces towards Newgrange (Eogan 1996: 104). Others can also be suggested—for example, K1 has some areas of pick dressing but no pattern, and K3 is undecorated, acting as a frame for K2, a decorated stone with large nested arcs crossing its surface. Moving around the cairn, there are some areas with definite sequences of panels and other areas without. K3 and the undecorated K6 frame K4 and K5, which are lavishly decorated with central spirals and opposing arcs of similar form. K6 and undecorated K9 frame K7 and K8 with dominant circular and arc motifs of similar form. By contrast, from K10 to K18, a long stretch leading from the entrance area of the eastern temple to the southeast part of the perimeter, all the kerbstones are decorated without any visual break. A similar situation with panels and continuously decorated stretches occurs all round the curve except where there are many small and undecorated stones in the north where temples 13 and 14 almost abut the cairn and block a view of the kerb.
The most frequent designs on the Knowth kerbstones are circular forms, meandering lines or ‘serpentine’ forms, parallel lines or arcs, and arrangements of circles and spirals. Many of the kerbstones have one or two visually dominant, centrally placed motifs that stand out or arrest the eye, often of similar form to motifs on neighbouring stones (e.g., Figure 3.25: K5, K17, K11) These may be accompanied by smaller and less visually arresting motifs towards the sides, top, or bottom of the stone. Other stones have a repetitive pattern of smaller motifs of similar form, such as circles or spirals, dispersed over the entire stone surface rather than one or a few large dominant motifs (e.g., Figure 3.25: K42). Some stones combine separate motifs into a single pattern in a manner analogous to the Newgrange entrance stone. Others have unique, distinctive motifs, such as the two entrance stones to the temples in the kerb opposite each other on either side of the cairn; both have similar and distinctive decoration not found elsewhere.
Figure 3.25. Graphic designs on some of the kerbstones at Knowth (site 1).
Knowth East
Most of the passage on the eastern side of the temple is remarkably uniform in height and width (originally about 40 m long, 1.6 m high, and 85 cm wide) (Figure 3.26), and it is possible to see right down it and into the chamber from the present entrance, suggesting that the chamber and its end cell may have been significantly illuminated by the rising sun at the equinox. In the final 11-m section of the passage, the roof rises gradually until it gets to the chamber space and reaches its highest point (2.7 m) above the floor; here the soaring corbelled roof reaches 5.9 m in height. The bodily impact of the constricted passage space compared with that of the chamber is huge.
Figure 3.26. Plan of the passage and chamber of Knowth East, showing orthostats decorated in Eogan’s ‘angular style’. After Eogan 1986: fig. 76.
The passage on the eastern side differs from that of Newgrange by its use of sandstone as well as greywacke orthostats, the combination of which creates both a visual and tactile contrast between individual orthostats. There is also an important distinction between the outer and inner parts of the passage, with the former being sparsely decorated. A sill of three stones demarcates the transition from the outer to the inner passage space. Both the left and right orthostats immediately before the sill are decorated with picked meandering lines. The stone to the right is hard greywacke and is most visually striking, with a complex curving series of picked lines covering its surface, appearing almost anthropomorphic in form (see discussion below). The one to the left is a soft sandstone orthostat with broad bands of picking curving down from the top of the stone. Passing over the sillstones, the next four orthostats to the right have curvilinear designs covering all or parts of their surfaces; to the left there are two more orthostats. The capstone over the sillstones is also elaborately decorated on its left half with a series of zigzag lines. The rest of the passage orthostats are not very elaborate or visually complex. Most have areas of diffuse picking, but there is an absence of pattern. Another sillstone in the passage floor marks the transition to the chamber space. Now high up in the roof above the second from last passage roofing stone is a corbel covered in an open pattern of zigzag lines.
Each of the chamber recesses is formed by five orthostats, two on each side and a backstone. The left and right recesses are rectangular in form, the back wedge-shaped. A sill separates the innermost part of the left cell from the rest of the chamber space. The backstone of the left cell consists of three layers of horizontal rectangular blocks. The uppermost of these is sandstone and feels incredibly smooth in comparison with the greywacke that makes up the other stones in this cell. The backstones lack graphic motifs. The innermost orthostat to the left has some areas of dense picking on its face. This cell is almost entirely unelaborated, except for the outermost corbel which has a meandering zigzag line, a circle, and other irregular picked forms.
The end cell has no sillstone but contains the remains of a stone basin covered with large areas of diffuse picking. A chamber orthostat to the right of the cell has linear or curvilinear decoration over its surface, similar to that found on the orthostats in the transitional inner passage space. The first left orthostat of the cell has a double row of bold zigzag lines running down its face and areas of very fine scored lines forming irregular patterns and lozenges. The surface of this stone is incredibly smooth; the faint scratched lines cannot be felt, only the bolder picked lines. It is only discretely decorated. The inner left orthostat contrasts utterly with the outer. The surface is rough and large areas are covered with picking, but there is an absence of pattern. Diffuse picking is also present on the corbels above. The backstone is also comparatively rough and covered with areas of picking in the vicinity of enlarged hollows towards its top. The corbels above also have diffuse picking.
The lack of decorative elaboration found to the left and back of this cell contrasts markedly with the striking motifs on the innermost orthostat to the right (no. 48). This has an almost perfectly smooth surface apart from five hollows enlarged or deepened by picking. The surface is covered with zigzag bands and lozenges in interconnected patterns. The outermost right orthostat of the cell (no. 49) has a comparatively rough surface, with slight scratched designs and small areas of picking. Picking and scratched marks occur on the corbels above. The imagery on this backstone, as in Knowth West, resembles that which occurs on the entrance kerbstone.
The right, or north, cell contrasts with the two others because access to it is restricted by the presence of two external jambs 2.2 m high. The space between them, through which one must squeeze, is only 50 cm wide. This necessitates moving into this cell sideways before being able to turn round and look ahead. So one cannot look straight at the backstone when moving into the cell. The presence of the two jambs also conceals the back of this cell from the main chamber space. Through the two jambs it is possible to see part of an elaborately decorated sandstone basin (Figure 3.27). Eogan has noted that this is so large it must have been in position before the passage of the temple was constructed and the jamb stones to this cell put in place (Eogan 1986: 42). These two jambs contrast markedly with each other. The one to the left is boldly decorated with vertical and curvilinear bands of picking, resembling that found on the left and right passage orthostats flanking the sillstones into the inner passage area. It also has an area of close picking at the bottom. The front face of the right jamb, by contrast, is decorated only by diffuse picking without pattern. Orthostats to the left and right of the cell have some faint scratched lines and areas of dense or diffuse picking. By contrast, the backstone (no. 54) is elaborately decorated over almost its entire surface with diffuse picking, bands of scratched and infilled triangles, lozenges, U-shaped motifs, picked and scored lines that overlap, and radial motifs. The corbel above is decorated with picked circular designs. This backstone is the most elaborate and complex stone in the Knowth East temple. It is also the most inaccessible physically and visually, being situated in the darkest area of the temple and requiring sideways movement through the most constricted space in order to reach it. This perhaps suggests that it was the last orthostat to be seen, the culminating point of a journey. The radial designs on it are unique in this chamber and passage (Figure 3.27). Others occur elsewhere but not in this pattern, combination, or organization on the stone face. The decorative elaboration of this backstone is matched by that of the stone basin. Roughly circular in form, the sides are decorated with deeply cut concentric lines running towards five concentric circles at the front of the basin facing the entrance to the cell. The inside is decorated with arcs and radiating lines. Turning round to squeeze out of this cell, more decoration becomes apparent: two lines of zigzags on the inner face of the left jamb. The inner face of the right jamb is undecorated. This reverses the presence and absence of pattern on entry into the cell.
Figure 3.27. The decorated stone bowl and backstone in the right cell of Knowth East. The line drawing shows the succession of overlays on the backstone (orthostat 54) according to Eogan. After Eogan 1997: fig. 12.
Some other orthostats and corbels forming the central chamber space (rather than the sides of the recesses or cells) have some small areas of geometric decoration or picking, but none are elaborate or visually striking, except for a single corbel with a striking curvilinear zigzag pattern.
At Knowth East the greatest decorative elaboration occurs in the transition to the inner passage, and in the back and particularly the right cells. The central chamber area and the outer- and innermost parts of the passage are relatively plain in comparison.
Knowth West
As at Knowth East, the external part of the passage at Knowth West is remarkably uniform in height and width, a long, linear, 60-cm-wide tunnel moving from light to darkness as one stoops down to move along it (Figure 3.28). After three-quarters of its overall length (originally about 34 m), the passage bends to the right. The outer part of the passage has comparatively little decoration and only a few distinctive stones. As in Knowth East, in addition to the use of greywacke, some of the orthostats are of sandstone, which feel and look distinctively different. A few orthostats with decoration occur to the right and the left of the outer part of the passage, with spirals, concentric circular, and zigzag lines. Some have bands of picking but no pattern, others score marks, and none are very elaborate or visually striking.
Figure 3.28. Plan of the western chamber and passage at Knowth, showing orthostats decorated in Eogan’s ‘rectlinear style’. After Eogan 1986: fig. 84.
This relative lack of visual elaboration alters dramatically at the point at which the passage starts to bend to the right. Here the orthostats on either side of the passage are decorated in a very different manner, with picked areas of meandering designs over their faces, their forms suggesting fragmentary circles and arcs. Just beyond the point at which the passage starts to bend there is a high sillstone. The space in front of the sillstone is constricted by two inset orthostats and a low roof lintel. At this point the light at the entrance to the passage is no longer visible. Beyond the sill the passage roof becomes successively higher as one moves towards the inner chamber. From here onwards, all the passage orthostats to the left and right are elaborately decorated all over their surfaces with a startling series of picked decorated bands. The decorated bands on these inner passage stones are significantly deeper and wider than anything encountered in the outer passage. They also create a sense of motion as they bend and turn across the faces of the stones. Horizontal slabs heightening the passage roof above the orthostats have diffuse picked decoration over their surfaces. Orthostat 49, to the right of the passage immediately after the sill, appears uniquely anthropomorphic in form (Figures, 3.28, 3.29) (see discussion below). Opposite it, to the left, is a totally different stone, its face covered with areas of picking but without clear pattern. On orthostat 49, it is possible to trace with one’s hands the outlines of the linear and curvilinear grooves. The tactile impression of the stone opposite is, by contrast, indeterminate and diffuse because distinct lines are lacking. The stone to the right possesses visual and tactile clarity in comparison with the indeterminacy and ambiguity of the picked stone to the left. The next passage orthostat to the right (no. 48) is decorated in a similar style, but the pattern is very different in form, with meandering lines and circles and semicircles covering the surface. Opposite to the left is another orthostat with an area of close picking towards the top of the stone. Above this and the next passage orthostat is an extremely large horizontal slab supporting the rising roof. The first part of the front face is picked with zigzag lines, and there are numerous score marks. The rest is scored all over with unpatterned horizontal and vertical lines. It is possible to trace the picked zigzag lines with the fingers, but not the score marks. In a tactile sense they are invisible. The next two passage orthostats narrow the space of the passage so that one can just squeeze through into the end cell of the temple. The left stone has broad bands of picking but lacks pattern; the right stone has diffuse picking. This constriction of the passage width contrasts markedly with the rising ceiling above. Orthostats 39 to the left and 45 to the right, opposite each other at the end of the passage, both have broad faces. The passage now feels significantly wider. Rather than brushing against the stones, one must now reach out to them on either side. Orthostat 39 differs from all the previous stones in that it has clearly distinguished broad horizontal bands of picking on the upper part of the face with smooth bands in between. The lower part of the stone has more diffuse irregular and curvilinear picked areas. The orthostat opposite is rough over most of its surface, and areas of the stone, which bulge out, are covered in picking following raised areas of the stone surface. In the middle of this stone on the right part of the face there is an area with a remarkably polished, silky smooth feel to it but broken by diffuse rough picking. The next right orthostat (44) is similar in dimensions, but its surface is utterly different. There is a significant hollow on the lower part of the stone which has two distinct faces; the first, on the right, is somewhat recessed, with a central sinuous groove dividing the face deep enough to run one’s fingers through it. The right part of the face is covered with bands of curvilinear and semicircular motifs and a single lozenge whose outlines can be traced with the hands. The left side of the face has scored lozenges low down and is otherwise undecorated, apart from areas of close picking with no recognizable pattern. A horizontal corbel slab above has diffuse picking. The orthostat opposite on the left (40) is one of the most distinctive and unusual in the temple. Its face is covered with bands of triangles and lozenges resembling orthostat 6 in the back of the chamber space at Dowth South. Smooth areas in between the picked motifs have diffuse picking. This picking on these negative forms activates their shapes and makes the entire surface appear alive in artificial illumination. The stone surface also has another layer of earlier scoring of the same designs but on a much smaller scale.
Figure 3.29. Knowth West: The anthropomorphic orthostat 49 on the right-hand side of the passage.
The final two stones to the left and right of the temple are differentiated from the other orthostats by a sillstone decorated with horizontal grooves across its front face (sill 2). Beyond is another sill in front of the backstone. In antiquity the stone basin that once stood in the end cell was moved to its present position, stuck about a third of the way down the passage where it begins to turn to the right. Orthostat 41, to the left of the chamber space, has a broad, flat face covered with motifs utterly different again to anything previously encountered. There are very broad bands and areas of picking and more closely picked meandering and curvilinear designs with occasional lozenges and zigzags ‘emerging’. There is a contrast between the decoration on the upper part of the stone and that on the lower part, where rows of triangles and zigzag and wavy lines occur. Diffuse picking covers other areas of the face, and unpicked areas are left. To the right, orthostat 43 contrasts significantly. The surface is covered with diffuse areas of picking, but there is no pattern. Diffuse picking also occurs on the corbels above these orthostats on either side of the chamber and on the capstone and two horizontal slabs forming the back of the chamber above the backstone.
Compared with the massive orthostats to the left and right of the chamber space, the chamber backstone is a relatively small and insignificant slab. The expectation gained from the experience of other temples—that one might find a massive stone here—is unfulfilled. The decoration on this slab is somewhat similar to that found on the entrance kerbstone (see Figure 3.25: K11). However, there is no central line and, unlike on the kerbstone, the lines do not curve round at the bottom to fill the central space. It consists of a series of nested picked lines forming an arch, becoming increasingly smaller towards the centre. Picking covers the lower surface beneath. The overall visual effect of the design is to create a sense of finality and disappearance from the worldly domain into another reality. At Dowth West it seems possible that the ancestral spirits of the dead exited the chamber through this backstone to emerge and be reborn through Dowth East in the direction of the rising morning sun.
At Knowth West we find a general distinction between the inner and outer parts of the passage, with the inner passage far more elaborately decorated. The theme is one of movement past sparsely decorated stones with static motifs to stones heavily decorated with meandering patterns full of vitality and movement, from thinner picked lines to much thicker bands. To simplify the journey down the passage and into the chamber space involves encountering circular, then meandering, then zigzag and triangular/lozenge motif fields, a series of stylistic transformations in the manner in which the stones are decorated. The consistent surface picking of the stones, which may be either diffuse or dense, creates pattern or not, means that there is consistent ambiguity with regard to whether motifs or patterns are present or not. On some stones pattern can be felt with the hands and visually recognized as motif. On other stones decorative alteration, or work, can be felt, but pattern or design remains elusive. Key decorated stones may be encountered on either the right or the left of the passage. Where the passage bends round to the right, the more elaborate stones with meandering lines are encountered. Precisely at the point of transition from light to darkness, the stones become deeply picked. Stones with or without motifs may sometimes be paired. In the end chamber, it is the left-hand (north) side of the end cell that is most elaborately decorated. The backstone returns one to a design form first encountered on the entrance kerbstone.
CONSTRUCTING AND USING THE TEMPLES: STONES, MATERIALS, AND THEIR LANDSCAPE SIGNIFICANCE
The Newgrange cairn was built in alternate layers of turves and water-rolled pebbles. The amount of turf stripping involved was massive, effectively taking out of agricultural use a large area in the vicinity of the cairn (M. O’Kelly 1982: 127 ff.). This also happened at Knowth, and turves were used as well to construct the Knowth and Newgrange satellite cairns (M. O’ Kelly 1982: 128; Eogan 1986: 31). The pebbles in the Newgrange cairn were derived from the lower river terrace immediately north of the Boyne, in all probability from what is now a permanently water-filled, figure-8-shaped pond 750 m due south of the cairn (M. O’Kelly 1982: 117). The greywacke orthostats of the passage and chamber and the roof corbels and the kerbstones (apart from four of brown sandstone) were brought from the area north or east of Newgrange and Knowth where this rock outcrops, 3–5 km or more away. Some were found on the surface; others probably were quarried. Some may have been collected from the coastal cliffs at Clogher Head located some 10 km north of the mouth of the Boyne (Stout 2002: 30).
Gaps in the passage roof of Newgrange were packed with a mixture of burnt soil taken from a habitation area containing fragments of animal bone in the vicinity of the cairn, and sea sand brought from the mouth of the river Boyne 20 km downstream (M. O’Kelly 1982: 101). The granite basins within the chamber recesses of Newgrange were brought from much farther away (probably from the Mourne Mountains 50 km or more to the north). In this respect, it is interesting to note the resemblance between these shaped stone basins and the natural stone solution basins (rounded erosion hollows characteristic of granite) that are so widespread on the summits of the granite mountainous areas to the north.
Five types of nonlocal cobbles were used to embellish the façades and entrance areas of both Newgrange and Knowth. At Newgrange a huge amount of white quartz was discovered around the entrance area and used by O’Kelly to imaginatively reconstruct the present striking façade. Flecked with white mica, its origin is in the Wicklow Mountains 50 km to the south. Much smaller quantities were brought to Knowth. Dark, oval and rounded cobbles of granodiorite found at the entrances to Newgrange and Knowth are from the Mourne Mountains, gabbro cobbles are from the Carlingford Mountains (probably collected on the shoreline of Dundalk Bay), and granite at Newgrange from the Mourne Mountains. Banded siltstone cobbles were derived from the shoreline of the Carlingford Mountains to the north (F. Mitchell 1992; Meigan et al. 2002) (Figure 3.30).
Figure 3.30. The origins of materials used to construct the temples in the bend of the Boyne.
While virtually all of the kerbstones and internal orthostats of Newgrange are of greywacke, we have already noted that there is considerably more variety in the types of stone used in the kerb at Knowth, together with the internal use of some sandstone orthostats. Since everything else about these monuments is carefully ordered and planned and the labour involved in constructing them was massive, it is highly unlikely that the inclusion of these structural stones was the result of mere chance or the contingencies of local availability. If the builders of Knowth had required only greywacke, they would have acquired it. The whole point was to differentiate between Newgrange and Knowth in various ways. The limestone at Knowth was probably obtained from 1 or 2 km to the north or from local outcrops some 7 km to the east; sandstone was available in the immediate vicinity.
Some of the kerbstones of the satellite temples at Knowth are glacial erratics found locally. In other words, this was exotic rock found in a local context. During the Ice Age there was no movement of material from south to north, so all these erratics were derived from the mountains to the north. The small temple Knowth 14 located to the north of the great cairn had ten different types of rock in the surviving parts of the kerb, including local greywacke, limestones, conglomerates, sandstones, and glacial erratics (Eogan 1984: 83).
Outside the entrances to both passages at the great Knowth temple there are a series of stone settings. Seven occur outside the entrance to the eastern temple: two U-shaped settings to the left and three to the right adjoining the kerbstones, and two circular settings just to the east immediately outside the passage entrance. Setting 1 was the most complex, 4.5 m from the entrance kerbstone. It was scooped 0.2 m deep into the old ground surface and was paved with small stones and a square limestone block in the centre. Overlying these stones was a layer of quartz chips surrounded by two rows of stones. The innermost row was composed of glacial erratics, the outer of clay ironstone nodules. Setting 2 was also edged by glacial erratics, its interior paved with rolled stones (Eogan 1986: 46–48). Outside and immediately to the right of the entrance to Newgrange, a similar oval setting was discovered. Within it there were 607 water-worn quartz pebbles, ‘each the size of a medium potato’, 103 granite stones, and 612 angular fragments of quarried quartz (M. O’Kelly 1982: 75).A stone setting or a quartz façade may have existed outside the entrance to Loughcrew cairn T. Conwell described a layer of quartz from 3 to 4 feet high and 2 feet thick extending around the kerbstones, and a local landowner uncovered three ‘circles’ or paved areas of white quartz outside the cairn and another to the southwest (McMann 1993: 27; 1994: 527). Chalk balls found in cairn L by Conwell (McMann 1993: 35) represent another exotic import at Loughcrew, possibly derived from the far northwest of the Irish coast. Conwell also reported finding hundreds of water-rounded pebbles in the Loughcrew cairns.
The presence of the exotic stones has been interpreted as a manifestation of social contact with areas way beyond the Boyne valley (Stout 2002: 31). Cooney suggests they had a metaphorical significance, representing two contrasting scales of social life and landscape important to the cairn builders (Cooney 2000: 136). But their significance extended much further than a distinction between near and far, local and exotic. The stones forming the kerbs, façades, stone settings, and internal layers of the cairns were brought from an amazingly diverse set of locations in both the distant and the local landscape. They were gathered together in the circular form of the cairn. The symbolic significance of these materials—their different forms, textures, and colours—were related to their points of origin in the landscape beyond the temples. The wider landscape could be indirectly experienced or objectified through these materials. It could be encountered in an ambient circular body motion—that is, in an idealized form. The materials themselves were derived from mountains to the north and the south. The latter, the Wicklow Mountains, were visible in the far distance, the former—the Mourne, Carlingford, and Cooley Mountains—hidden. These mountain sources of white quartz and dark hard stones are very different. The Wicklow Mountains have mainly rounded summits and ridges. Deep U-shaped valleys cut through them with snake-like meandering streams in their bottoms. Two conical peaks formed of quartzite rock, Great Sugarloaf and Little Sugarloaf, appear as if permanently snow covered from a distance. The Mourne Mountains to the north constitute a bleak and even more dramatic landscape, with sharp and jagged peaks, boulder-strewn areas, and rock stacks with solution basins.
Materials used to construct the temples were also brought from the sandy beach at the mouth of the Boyne, from the river floodplain, from low ridges to the north, from coastal cliffs and pebble beaches, and from tilled and settled areas around the cairns. They were derived from the highest and most rugged places and the lowest-lying land, from deposits associated with saltwater and freshwater, marsh and dry land. The associations between seawater and freshwater and different types of stone were fundamental in the Neolithic and related to ways of exploring and expressing states of bodily transformation in life and in death (Fowler and Cummings 2003). The Boyne temples were located at or just beyond the point of the river where saltwater and freshwater met. During the restoration work at Newgrange, a spring was discovered welling up (now artificially drained) in the right side of the passage beneath orthostat R8 (M. O’Kelly 1982: 113), allowing water to flow down the passage. If Newgrange was built on the site of a spring, might this relate in an interesting way to the meandering form of the passage and the use of spring water in rites of transformation?
The Boyne temples were not so much a mimetic representation of a landscape in microcosm, as found elsewhere in Scandinavia and southern England (Tilley 1994; 1996), but rather represent a radical cultural reordering of that landscape. The people who collected and used the glacial erratics to build the kerbs round the smaller satellite temples at Knowth and the stone settings outside the temple entrances clearly recognized this material as nonlocal and exotic. Like the modern geologist, they also must have had a pretty good idea of where this material came from: the distant mountains to the northeast. But how did this material reach the Boyne valley? Who or what deposited it there? In bringing together all these materials, the temple builders were merely emulating the work of ancestral or supernatural forces that had acted in the past, beyond human memory. The materials used to construct and decorate the temples had inherent value in terms of their specific qualities. They were never neutral materials but highly charged with cultural meanings. The act of bringing them together and organizing them and inscribing motifs on some in a specific place made them supercharged with magical significance.
The presence of riverine and beach pebbles in the cairns and outside the kerbs suggests that areas outside the cairns were symbolic beaches, transitional spaces between one world and another. The relationship between sea and land was a metaphor for the relationship between the outside and inside of the temple, a watery and changing external world and a dry and eternal inner world associated with the dead. Quartz was a magical stone of special significance in this context. Fowler and Cummings have beautifully discussed the manner in which the sparkling and reflective qualities of quartz are akin to the properties of water. Although a hard stone, quartz may produce ripples when struck. They suggest in the context of their discussion of quartz in megaliths on the east coast of the Irish sea that ‘the practice of bringing glistening stones from the glittering sea may itself have been significant and aimed at producing a certain similarity of effect between parts of the megalithic complex and the reflective surface of the sea’ (Fowler and Cummings 2003: 7). They go on to argue that those depositing quartz at a monument were ‘making it wet’, marking it out as an appropriate context for acts of transformation (ibid.: 14).
Motifs in Numbers
The standard approach to analysing the motifs has been to compare and contrast different temples in relation to a quantitative analysis of the motifs. So, C. O’Kelly has remarked how each Boyne temple has a repertoire of motifs or style peculiar to itself (1973; 1982: 147). While the overall motif repertoire is held in common, some are preferred at one temple, others at another. For example, O’Kelly remarks how concentric circles are common at Dowth, and lozenges occur not at all in Dowth North and only on one orthostat in Dowth South. She also notes the manner in which radials and dots in circles are consistently found in hidden or obscure places at Newgrange (C. O’Kelly 1982: 149). Eogan very usefully shows how common motifs are typically positioned in different areas of the temple interiors. The ‘angular’ style occurs on the chamber backstones in Dowth South, in the chamber of Dowth East, in the passage and on the chamber orthostats in Dowth West and Newgrange. The ‘rectilinear’ style, by contrast, is confined to Knowth and concentrated in the inner parts of the passages and chambers of Dowth East and West (Eogan 1986: 187 ff.) (see Figures 3.26, 3.28).
One of the implications of the emphasis on different repertoires of motifs at different temples is perhaps that each temple had its unique or characteristic ‘signature’ relating to the social identity of the group that constructed it. But for O’Kelly, and for Shee Twohig (1981; 1996; 2000), the motifs are ultimately ‘geometric’ and ‘abstract’; that is their meaning and we can understand them no further.
Thomas (1992) has analysed the imagery on the Loughcrew cairns in a more general way, noting that there is little similarity among the individual monuments here in terms of which motifs are used or the way in which they are combined. He examines the numbers of separate motifs used on the stones and their depth inside the temples away from the entrances. He shows that stones bearing seven or more separate motifs are only found three or four paces into the temple, and those with eight or more are deep within the temple interior or chamber. In Loughcrew cairn T, the most complex stone is the capstone in the right recess (Thomas 1992: 149). He rightly suggests that only those who could access the deep recesses of the temple interiors would be able to experience the images; therefore, given the ambiguity of the motifs, the general difficulty in decoding their meaning implies they could mean many different things to different people and would be subject to constant interpretation and reinterpretation by ritual specialists—a perfect vehicle for the exercise of power through knowledge.
But quantifying and grading ‘complexity’ in this manner is rather problematic. This typically modernist form of analysis bears no relationship to how a person entering a dimly lit or completely dark chamber space actually experiences the motifs. Put simply, Thomas’ gaze is singularly disembodied. Looking at Shee Twohig’s (1981) documentation, one can see ‘everything’ at once, and all the motifs on paper, large or small, faint or bold, are equally distinct. However, as the account of the temples already undertaken has attempted to demonstrate, different stones have contrasting material properties, and the motifs and areas of picking on them are bodily experienced in a very different manner from paper representations. We can count the motifs inside Newgrange, as C. O’Kelly (1973; 1982) and Shee Twohig (2000: 96) do, and find that quantitatively, lozenges and zigzags are the most common motifs. However, the spirals are actually far more important and prominent in terms of the manner in which the temple is bodily encountered and experienced. It is highly unlikely that Neolithic people went about counting motif frequencies or combinations on every stone. Instead, the imagery would leave an impression on them through the observers’ bodily experience of it. Some things would be remembered, much would not. Statistical analyses by Thomas (1992) and others (e.g., Dronfield 1996) are, of course, reliant on an atemporal scheme in which all the motifs are there all of the time, whereas there is good evidence for a significant amount of temporal alteration of the stones (see below).
Style and Changing Traditions
O’Sullivan notes that the analysis of the motifs found in virtually all studies of Irish megalithic ‘art’ reduces the imagery to a collection of formal elementary forms. Non-formal decoration, such as extensive picking of the surface, tends to be considered peripheral and unimportant (O’Sullivan 1986: 71). He has produced an outstanding recent analysis completely revolutionising a study of the imagery of the Boyne valley temples (1986; 1996; 1997). He argues in relation to a study of Knowth that there are two basic styles of ornament: a ‘depictive style’ and a ‘plastic style’. The former is earlier and contemporary with the construction of the temple. The latter was added later and sometimes superimposed on the earlier ornamentation. A similar sequence is identified at Newgrange and Dowth. The ‘depictive style’ relates to stones that simply display a range of conventional motifs superimposed on the surface without any attempt to produce a unified or coherent pattern. It may be produced either by incision or picking (O’Sullivan 1996: 83). The important point is that the imperative is to produce the individual motif(s) rather than relate these to the form of the stone. The ‘plastic style’, by contrast, refers to stones in which the application of motifs is clearly related to the physical form and shape of the stone itself, such as picked lines that follow the sinuous stone outline or solid picking following the form of the stone, emphasizing such features as shoulders or edges (O’Sullivan 1986: 75). This plastic style of ornamentation occurs primarily within the passages and chambers of Knowth West and East and also on some of the kerbstones. O’Sullivan notes that the depictive style occurs on surfaces of stones that were both accessible and inaccessible (i.e., hidden) after the construction of the temple, whereas the plastic style occurs exclusively on stones that were accessible after temple construction. The implications are clear: the plastic style is a later embellishment, modification, or alteration. Where the plastic style occurs on stones as depictive ornamentation, it is invariably superimposed. It seldom extends to within 30 cm of the bottom of the stone within the temples and tends to relate to the side of the orthostat visible as one enters the passage (ibid.: 76). In the western temple at Knowth, virtually every stone in the chamber area is modified by dispersed picking, often spread evenly over the surface. This is significant because rather than concentrate decoration on individual stone surfaces, it represents an attempt to decorate the entire architectural space of the temple as a whole. The focus is away from individual stones.
O’Sullivan (1996) argues for a four-stage development. In the first stage, motifs are applied to stones but unrelated to their forms. In the second stage, much more ambitious designs are integrated in relation to the surface of the stone. Kerbstones 1, 52, and 67 (see Figure 3.18) at Newgrange and many at Knowth are representative of this. In the third stage, standard Irish geometric designs are absent and, instead, meandering or more ordered linear designs cover the surfaces of the stones, as on the orthostats of Knowth West and East and on the entrance stones. The designs reflect the outlines and contours of the stones. O’Sullivan notes that ‘many of these designs make only partial sense as two-dimensional images. Their aesthetic logic is more apparent in the context of the three-dimensional form of the stone’ (ibid.: 86). The final phase produces displays of picking, which do not form recognizable patterns but closely relate to the contours of the stones and the overall architecture of the monument.
At Loughcrew, the imagery is almost entirely from O’Sullivan’s stage 1. At Knowth, phases 3 and 4 are blurred, occurring together on many orthostats. At Newgrange, phase 3 is absent but it represents the most extreme development of phase 4, which also occurs on some of the Dowth orthostats. If phase 4 was first introduced or experimented with at Knowth, it was applied in the most vigorous manner at Newgrange.
We have seen that the techniques used to embellish the temples with imagery differ significantly from one temple to another. At Dowth there is a virtual absence of overall pick dressing of the stones, while at Newgrange virtually every orthostat is pick dressed, creating a uniform as opposed to a differentiated surface (O’Kelly and O’Kelly 1983: 158). This overall pick dressing at Newgrange occurred after the orthostats were in place. Pick dressing of this character is only found at Dowth in the right recess or cell of Dowth South. Incised decoration is rare at Loughcrew, except in cairn L and on the roofstone of the right cell in cairn T; and false, relief, pick dressing or smoothing of picked lines is not recorded (Shee Twohig 1981: 106; Eogan 1997: 218).
The Decorative Act
Frequently one finds in the literature a frustration with regard to some of the more ‘poorly’ executed images, such as those on most of the Newgrange kerbstones which are referred to as ‘doodles’, ‘scratchings’, ‘randomly placed marks’, or ‘graffiti’. C. O’Kelly comments with regard to Newgrange that ‘one finds motifs carved without apparent regard to the suitability of the surface or to their position on it; one finds a single insignificant-looking motif on a stone of perhaps three square metres in surface area; one finds motifs scratched or picked on the sides of orthostats while the main face remains unadorned’ (C. O’Kelly 1982: 148). Her suggestion is that the actual act of carving in these cases was perhaps the significant thing. She notes that the positioning of stones with hidden motifs was meaningful. One forms the back of the roof box; others are at the junction of the passage and chamber roofs. Whether seen or not, decorated stones were employed in particular and important transitional spaces. Some stones were carved before being positioned and were intended for specific places and areas in the temples. Others were decorated in place.
Time and Memory
Overlays involving the substitution or replacement of existing motifs by imposed ones occur principally at Dowth, Newgrange, and Knowth. Sometimes earlier motifs are incorporated into new compositions (Eogan 1997). Eogan argues that at Knowth, incised angular motifs (triangles, lozenges, zigzags) are the earliest and sometimes bear no relationship to areas picked over to create the same motifs on which dispersed area picking also intrudes (ibid.: 223). Eogan has shown how some of the orthostats in the Knowth West and Knowth East temples have a succession of up to five different overlays of motifs or decoration in different styles, which he refers to as (1) angular incised, (2) angular picked, (3) dispersed area picking, (4) ribbon art, and (5) close area picking (Figure 3.27). Faintly incised angular motifs occur on thirty stones in the chamber and passage of the Knowth East temple and on eleven stones in the chamber and passage of the Knowth West temple. Faint angular incised motifs are only present on six (5%) of the Knowth kerbstones (Eogan 1986:150), and other picked curvilinear designs are superimposed over them. A further overlay of picked ornamentation occurs on fifteen stones (12%) (O’Sullivan 1986:77; Jones 2004:204–5). There are then either two or three events of superimposition on a minority of the Knowth kerbstones, and these usually enhance rather than obliterate or cut across preexisting motifs.
Motif overlays also occur inside the Dowth and Newgrange temples. Incised angular motifs do not occur on the Newgrange kerbstones but are present on six internal orthostats. At Dowth North, incised angular motifs occur on three chamber orthostats, in Dowth South in the right recess. Eogan’s argument is that these motif overlays represent distinct chronological styles. The evidence for all three Boyne temples is broadly similar. The motifs on the kerbstones were mainly produced in a single phase. By contrast, many orthostats in the temple interiors were added to and reworked many times.
Jones (2004) relates the image overlays to mnemonic practices of remembrance. He rightly argues that stones embody the significance of place and suggests that the work, or activity, of image production was of central significance. Reworking images on the stones in the temple interiors was a ‘technology of remembrance’ intended to recall sentiments of place and identity. But Jones’ perspective is generalized, and he does not tell us how these different images did so. He usefully points out that the reworking of the stones over time has its counterpart in the bringing of stones to the temples from the surrounding landscape. Both were repetitive acts, objectifying the significance of place and landscape. This reworking either obliterated and replaced or enhanced preexisting images. It need not have taken place in single episodes of activities throughout the entire temple interiors. It is far more likely that individual orthostats may well have been reworked at different times and on different occasions, each with its own biography of image production.
The presence of stones with hidden motifs at Newgrange and in the western and eastern temples at Knowth has led to the suggestion that many of these may have been recycled from an earlier monument (Eogan 1998; 1999: 426). Eogan suggests that the likely position of such a monument was underneath the great Knowth cairn, and stones from it may have been extracted to construct both the Knowth temples and that at Newgrange. Another possibility is that both Knowth and Newgrange were constructed on the sites of earlier monuments, since there is some evidence of a pre-cairn sod mound at Newgrange (M. O’Kelly 1982: 71–72). In Knowth West, three of these stones served as capstones and four as orthostats. All are in the outer part of the passage. In Knowth East, Eogan has identified three capstones and one orthostat in the outer part of the passage and two corbels in the chamber (Eogan 1998: 162). Except for one orthostat in the eastern temple, this decoration was entirely or partially hidden. When these stones were reused as orthostats, most were placed upside down in relation to their former positioning (ibid.: 166). This also appears to be the case for some of the Newgrange orthostats, such as R3 in the outer part of the passage. Those orthostats in the front of the Newgrange kerb with extensive hidden decoration (K4, K13, and K18) (Figure 3.31), and K4 with its decoration on both main faces, could have formed the sides of cells in an earlier temple similar in internal form to Loughcrew cairn L.
Figure 3.31. Hidden designs on the back of kerbstone 13, Newgrange. After C. O’Kelly 1982: fig. 26.
It has been proposed that the motifs were produced during altered states of consciousness, as ‘entoptic images’ (Bradley 1989a; Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1993; Dronfield 1995a; 1995b; 1996; Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2005). This is imagery spontaneously produced in the brain either by neural structures or by practices aimed at achieving altered states of consciousness, such as induced fatigue, sensory deprivation, and the use of narcotics. Dronfield claims that Irish temple art was induced through mind-altering techniques and substances. The architectural structure of temples provided ‘an ideal environment for isolating the subject from auditory and visual stimulation’ (Dronfield 1995b: 263). Three major stimuli might have been at work: flickering light, hallucinogenic fungi, and migrainous syndromes. His analysis is highly selective and is based on isolating particular motif forms, eliminating their spatial relationship to others on the stones, and aesthetic compositional principles (Dronfield 1995a: 543)—that is, precisely those features that might be regarded as meaningful and socially significant. In his statistical analyses (Dronfield 1996), he also lumps together motifs occurring on the external kerbstones—where presumably, according to his argument, sensory deprivation would not occur—and those found within the passages and chambers. The result of this lack of sensitivity to the context of the motifs detracts considerably from the value of the analysis. He suggests a general association between ‘concentric’ motifs and passages leading into the temples, but these are absent from the two kerbstones outside Knowth. Again there is a lack of sensitivity to differences between the temples and context. Another association claimed by Dronfield is between angular motifs and death rites in the temple chambers. But again, this is far from exclusive and is a far more pertinent observation in relation to the interiors of Knowth East and West than Newgrange. Non-formal decoration is ignored, as are temporal differences in the production of the images.
All the statistical analyses conducted are self-evidently paper-based and not related to any sensory analyses of the temples; nor are there considerations of those motifs that are visually dominant, hidden or not, their relationship to the shapes and forms of stones, and so on. Such an analysis derived from paper only gains a degree of plausibility by being printed on paper. Lewis-Williams and Pearce (2005: 264) declare that they are entirely satisfied and convinced by Dronfield’s analysis, which is not so surprising since Lewis-Williams’ earlier work inspired it in the first place. They state that ‘the art shows that Irish Neolithic religion indeed entailed causing the level of consciousness to slide towards the introverted end of the spectrum, and then by placing meaning and value on selected mental percepts perceived in these states. Neolithic people carved those meaningful percepts on tombs, in the process standardizing them’ (ibid.: 265). Of course, the art itself shows no such thing. Such a perspective is entirely derived from a deeply reductive neuropsychological perspective. A fundamental aspect of the imagery is that while a limited number of basic motif forms do occur, they are far from standardised and occur in complex and distinctive compositions or associations, differing from stone to stone and temple to temple. An ‘entoptic’ approach, rather than explaining what the art might mean, seems to explain it away as essentially meaningless, an effect of drug-induced states, sensory deprivation, and the like. Lewis-Williams and Pearce stress over and over again that the process of selecting and depicting ‘entoptic’ images was not automatic. People were not photocopiers producing exact copies of their visions but selected and modified those images that were significant to them (e.g., ibid.: 277). In other words, entoptically induced imagery, if it ever existed, bears little relationship to what people actually chose to depict in practice anyway, precisely because it is not meaningful.
Recognizing Iconicity: Celestial Bodies, Temples, and Landscape
Numerous attempts have been made to further decode the meanings of at least some of this ‘geometric’ art (see O’Sullivan 1986 for a historical review) in a much more specific way. The imagery may appear to be entirely ‘geometric’ and ‘abstract’ in character, but one line of argument is that it actually has iconic significance. For example, the wavy or meandering lines have repetitively been referred to as ‘serpentine’ in the literature. The circular and especially the radial motifs have been consistently interpreted as sun symbols and/or sundials (e.g., Coffey 1912 [1877]).
The most comprehensive recent attempt has been made by Brennan (1983). In effect, he tries to understand all the motifs in terms of calendrical, solar, and lunar imagery. Differences between image forms are understood as representations of (1) the sun and the moon; (2) the differing positions and movements of these celestial bodies across the sky in relation to the seasons; and (3) the monthly cycles of the moon as it waxes and wanes and changes shape. He suggests that both the crescent and the wavy lines represent the moon and the lunar cycle and counting or reckoning units measuring time. For example, referring to Knowth kerbstone 5 he writes, ‘A set of 6 circles (6 months of the year?) extend across the right half of [the stone] from above the centre of a spiral with 6 turnings. The circle and crescent (far left) also suggest the moon’ (Brennan 1983: 137) (Figure 3.25:K5). The twists and turns of meandering lines represent lunar cycles: ‘Luni-solar images are frequently circles and crescents merged in a single emblem’ (ibid.: 175). Circles describe the shape of celestial objects and their movement: ‘The circle of the horizon surrounded by the circular dome of the sky gives rise to a model of the universe as a series of concentric shells’ (ibid.: 189). Quadrangles are understood in terms of linking opposing cardinal directions, becoming ‘emblematic of the four corners of the earth. Thus, sunrise, sunset, midday and midnight, the equinoxes and the solstices … are all bound together in the unity of the symbol’ (ibid.: 182). The spiral is understood in terms of an ‘archaic astronomy’ in which the heavens were viewed as spiralling: ‘The sun moves in a clockwise spiral and the stars revolve anti-clockwise. The moon’s path is not a true circle but a spiral whose successive loops cross the ecliptic in a westward, anti-clockwise motion opposed to the direction of the sun and the planets’ (ibid.: 189). He argues for an overwhelming preoccupation with measuring time, sundials, and calendars:‘Time is invisible and its images are necessarily abstract. The sun and moon appear as schematic symbols, frequently integrated with representations of days, months or years’ (ibid.: 179).
Given that we know that the architecture of the temples was intimately related to significant points in the solar calendar, which must have been based on detailed observation and knowledge of the heavens, some of Brennan’s interpretations of the significance of the imagery are plausible. Indeed, it would be quite surprising if solar and lunar imagery were absent. However, the problem with his approach is the attempt to explain everything in these terms. In the case of some particularly striking and bold motifs, such as the radials on the eastern side of the Dowth kerb, some stones in the Knowth kerb, and the rear cell of Loughcrew temple T, a fairly straightforward claim can be made that these are either iconic representations or concerned with seasonality, time, and lunar and solar cycles. Such a claim cannot be made in relation to angular designs, spirals, nested arcs, many circular motifs, parallel lines, or offsets, except in the most abstracted terms; and the more Brennan tries to force everything into the same frame of reference, the more implausible his account becomes. Cupmarks and the significance of diffuse and area picking of stones are simply ignored, as in other accounts.
Munn’s (1973) and Morphy’s (1991) research on Aboriginal graphic designs and their significance has amply demonstrated an enormous degree of fluidity of meaning in relation to even the simplest graphic designs such as nested circles, which are susceptible to a great variety of different interpretations related to age, gender, cosmological beliefs, and the social contexts of their production and use. All have multiple meanings, and the ambiguity with regards to what they mean and to whom, and where and why, is the key to understanding them. The demand that very different graphic designs should have a single set of significations seems rather peculiar.
What both Munn’s and Morphy’s research has demonstrated is that one set of meanings attributable to Aboriginal graphic designs is as representations of landscape features and ancestral doings and interventions in that landscape. For example, concentric circles can represent ancestral campsites. The central area is conceptualised as a hole from which the ancestor emerged. The circles ‘synthesize the notion of a place where the ancestor slept (made camp), and walked around with concepts of emergence (coming out), procreation (progeny go into the ground) and death (ancestor goes into the ground)’ (Munn 1973: 138). Given that both the local and the wider landscape and movements of stones, people, and materials in it were fundamental parts of the significance of the temples, it would be surprising if, like solar and lunar symbolism, representations of landscape and temples within that landscape and paths or routes of movement through it were not part of the meaning ranges of the motifs. So, for example, we could understand the meandering lines (see Figure 3.2: no. 8) both as relating to seasonality and solar and lunar events and movements and as meaning watercourses (rivers like the Boyne that meander) and perhaps snakes (a standard ‘iconic’ understanding). Meandering designs more abstractly can be understood in terms of movement downriver or around closely grouped temples with variable spaces in and between them, as at Loughcrew (see Fraser 1998). Various circular forms could be understood as meaning temples and their chambers, or kerb circuits, or the relationship between hills and temples, the kerb and the chamber, the temple and the horizon, or relate to expanding ripples in water, and so on. The concentric circular designs that are so common could represent the circularity of the cairns and their kerbs. There is no way in and no way out. What this may imply is that the cremated remains of the ancestors put to rest in the temples cannot return to the living. They are caught in an eternal trap. Some images, like those found on the backstone in the central right cell of Loughcrew’s cairn L (see Figure 3.7), bear a striking resemblance to a representation of the Loughcrew temple cemetery itself, with larger temples and smaller satellite temples perhaps being depicted by the circles with central dots (chamber spaces). The banded siltstones brought to Knowth have striking patterns of arcs looping around their surfaces: these stones were pre-decorated with the same patterns as found on some of the temple kerbs and orthostats. ‘Angular’ designs, such as triangles, might refer to distant mountains or passage and chamber orthostats. Spirals might be associated with the passages of the temples, with the processes of going in and going out signifying movement and transition, as Lewis Williams and Pearce (2005: 268) have suggested. There is only one way in and one way out. They are about the process of transition into and out of the passage and chamber.
The striking linked three-spiral design in the back of the Newgrange chamber (Figure 3.22), illuminated by the solstice light, can be understood as a representation of Newgrange, Dowth, and Knowth and linked ceremonial processions that took place in, around, and between these temples (the spatial ‘representation’ of the three great cairns is correct). It is interesting to note in this respect that such is the visual power and intricacy of this design that it is the one that everyone remembers from Newgrange, while forgetting the rest. This true memory of Newgrange (as opposed to ‘false’ paper memories documenting every stone) has come to stand not only for Newgrange as a whole, but for the study of Irish and British prehistory. It appears on the cover of M. O’Kelly’s book (1982) and is the adopted symbol of the British Prehistoric Society. Even more widely, it has been popularly appropriated as a symbol of ancient ‘Celtic’ spirituality (Stout 2002: 45).
The arcs and circles on the roofstone of the right recess at Newgrange and on the backstone of the right cell of cairn L at Loughcrew can be understood in a similar way as representations of megalithic cemeteries, forecourt areas, movements around and between them, and so on. Lacking informants, we cannot know with any greater specificity, and it really does not matter simply because there is no single, original or unitary meaning for us to attempt to recover. And, as Cochrane rightly points out, there may be elements of the carnivalesque at work here, with an escalation of everyday experiences within the temples (Cochrane 2005: 17).
Seeing People
An early attempt at an anthropomorphic interpretation was advanced by Breuil (1934), but it was based on highly inaccurate and schematic drawings. Herity claimed an ‘angular god’ can be seen in lozenge and zigzag designs at Dowth South (Herity 1974: 106), while Crawford saw an ‘eye goddess’ in the triple spiral motif on orthostat L19 at Newgrange (Crawford 1957). Eogan, in his account of first entering the Knowth West temple, writes:‘Coming to a stone sill, we illuminated the orthostat on its inner right side and beheld what seemed to be an anthropomorphic figure with two, large staring eyes. This ghostly guardian suggested that we were reaching the inner sanctum’. The reaction Wayne Bennett and I had on our first entry into this temple was exactly the same. We had never seen a decorated stone like this before, inside or outside any temple, and its appearance was both wild and frightening (Figure 3.29). Furthermore, the orthostat (no. 49) is situated at a crucial point of transition between the inner and outer part of the passage, and on the right-hand side, which we know had particular importance in many temples. The anthropomorphic likeness has also been remarked on by others, if only to suggest it is purely fortuitous (Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2005: 218). O’Sullivan (1996:92) has recently argued again that this may indeed be understood as a ‘schematic pseudo-human image’. He also remarks that orthostat 69 in the eastern temple, in a similar position, has a comparable, if a somewhat less anthropomorphic, design. Orthostats 49 and 69 are unique to Knowth (though are much more common in the megalithic temples of Brittany; Thomas and Tilley 1993; O’Sullivan 1996; 2002). In both temples, similarly decorated stones with meandering ribbon designs (which Eogan refers to as the ‘rectilinear style’) occur solely on the innermost parts of the passage and in the chambers (Eogan 1986: 194–95).
A macehead discovered in the right recess of the eastern temple in association with the decorated stone basin and cremated human remains is also strikingly anthropomorphic in form, resembling a head and face. Since there is a definite stylistic similarity between all these stones with rectilinear decoration in both temples, it can be suggested that, in connection with the two anthropomorphic stones, they are part of a narrative of bodily change and dissolution occurring in the context of the mortuary practices within the temples (cf. Thomas and Tilley 1993 for an analysis of Breton megalithic imagery). But if this is the case, it only provides an understanding of some of the orthostats in Knowth West and East. However, in the light of these observations, the significance of the picked-over grooves on orthostats R12 and R21 on the right of the Newgrange passage may have a particular resonance. Both stones are situated at transition points, R12 between the inner and outer part of the passage, R21 at the point of transition between passage and chamber. Metaphorically, these are the ribs of the stone showing through the overlay of pick dressing. Otherwise the imagery in the temples appears to be resolutely non-anthropomorphic, at least if we want to see direct iconic representations in it.
Based on the discussion undertaken so far, we can suggest the following. All the graphic designs had multiple meanings. The motifs had conceptual power as material and visual metaphors. In their ‘abstractness’ and their ‘generality’ they were capable of linking together entirely different domains of human experience and action in relation to architectural space, rituals, the human body itself, landscape, and cosmology. They were significantly related to the movements of the sun and the moon in the heavens, to the passage of time, and the seasons. They were significantly related to the architectural features of the temples themselves and movement into, out of, around, and between them. They were significantly related to the local and wider landscape, its topography, freshwater and saltwater, and the movements of stones and materials in it both in the past (ancestral time) and in the Neolithic present. They were significantly related to the human body, sensory experience of the temples, and the death rites that took place within them. Finally, they were significantly related to structures of societal power and authority.
CONCLUSIONS
The notion that at least some of the stones and the images upon them are related to the human body can be taken much further than simply pointing to possible anthropomorphic representations.
We can suggest that, in a general sense, the stones themselves were considered to be subjects rather than objects in the Neolithic. Brought from the surrounding landscape, each orthostat or kerbstone had its own biography and history and its own personality. These stones were like people. The process of decorating and redecorating them summoned forth their sonorous voices in the context of the temple. Furthermore, these stones could walk; they could move by themselves. Evidence for the manner in which stones could walk was present everywhere in the landscape of the bend of the Boyne. The glacial erratics so carefully chosen for inclusion in the kerbs of the smaller temples and the stone settings outside Knowth had clearly moved from the mountains to the north. How else could they have got there? If stones could walk, they were clearly animate beings. Decorating these stones enlivened and emphasized their inherent powers, and they could be helped to walk again by taking them from one temple to be used in the construction of another. If the stones were metaphorically like persons, then picking a stone was dressing its skin, creating a new personal identity for it, one that was frequently related to its preexisting unaltered identity—hence, the pick dressing of ‘natural’ hollows and depressions. We can then envisage the long lines of stones flanking the passages, and those encircling the chambers, as being persons standing opposite each other, or in relation to each other, like lines of decorated people. The individual kerbstones and orthostats can be understood as objectifying the identities of those responsible for picking their surfaces. Part of them and their identity was permanently left on the stone and immortalised. Many of the Knowth kerbstones and the three kerbstones in ‘plastic’ style outside Newgrange appear to have been the work of one individual stonemason. By contrast, the internal orthostats with layered motifs appear to be the result of collective work undertaken over a period of time. In this manner, the collective rather than the individual identities of stones was being stressed within the temples, entirely appropriate in the context of collective burial rites emphasizing the significance of the temple-using group.
A considerable number of the motifs documented at Newgrange are either completely or partially hidden in various ways. Indeed, Newgrange might be described as a textbook example of the art of concealment, employing the full range of possible techniques available:
1. Completely hiding decorated stones during the building of the temple, either in the roof or in the floor, making sure that these images could never be seen or experienced.
2. Decorating stones in obscure areas where the images are likely to be missed—high up or low down or near the corners and edges of stones.
3. Placing parts of decorated stones over others so that the full extent of the image field remains invisible—for example, the roof slab in the right or left recess.
4. Positioning images on the sides rather than the main faces of orthostats.
5. Concealing images on the side faces rather than on the backstones of the cells.
6. Picking over images so as to partially or completely obliterate them.
7. Picking over and around hollows, depressions, and grooves on the stone in the same manner as images, so as to create further ambiguity with regard to what is or is not decorated and supposed to be there.
8. Using the relative lack and changing quality of natural light in the chamber and passage to enhance all these techniques and effects, the most striking visible images being in the deepest and darkest areas of the chamber which are never directly illuminated by the rays of the sun, even on the winter solstice.
Subterfuge and visual deception appear to have been an important element in relation to the external kerbstones too. We know that Knowth has two passages and chambers, each marked externally in the kerb by similar stones that are distinctive from those appearing elsewhere. Dowth also has two, and possibly a third, marked by another distinctive stone. The three stones in the Newgrange kerb decorated in ‘plastic’ style suggest the presence of three passages and chambers in the cairn, but we know that two of these are false. This can perhaps be understood in the context of group strategies of emulation and power, altering the monument to make it significantly different from both Knowth and Dowth.
One way of contrasting the Loughcrew temples and those of the bend of the Boyne is to understand the former as mountain temples associated with the domain of the sky, and the latter as water temples linked to the domain of the river and the sea. The stones embodied the individual significance of both the particular temple and the wider landscape. Decorating the stones can be regarded as a means of activating them, emphasizing the link between stone, landscape, place, and social identity, as Jones (2004) has suggested. The reworking of these stones over time has its counterpart in the bringing of stones and materials to the temples over time. Both were repeated acts reinforcing memories and identities.
The landscape itself is always experienced as differentiated and dispersed. In the form of the cairn kerbs of the Boyne temples, it became idealised and cosmologically ordered, gathered together as a whole. While the great temples gathered together and ordered materials from local and distant landscapes, from the mountains, the rivers, and the sea, they also ordered and integrated that landscape with the heavens above, with the passage of the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky.
Celestial and Human Bodies in Motion
The entrances of Newgrange, Dowth, and Knowth are related to the most significant points in the solar calendar: the equinoxes and the solstices. If we take into account the alignment of the Knowth passages in relation to equinoxal sunrise and sunset and the motion of the sun and the moon as they move across the sky from east to west and in the south from left to right, this suggests that movement around the Knowth kerb was clockwise, like the movement of the sun, from the western to the eastern entrance and back again through the symbolic night represented by the northern temple perimeter. This provides a model to understand motion in relation to the other temples: movement around them, too, was clockwise and to the right.
Inside the temples themselves the dominant emphasis is movement to the right. This is emphasized in the manner in which the Knowth West passage bends to the right and in the elaboration of imagery in the right cell of Loughcrew cairn T, in Newgrange and Knowth East; in the right orthostat in the end cell, the presence of a single cell to the right, and elaborated with imagery in Dowth South; and in the architectural elaboration of the right cell in Dowth North. Movement to the right (following the course of the moon and the sun in the sky) was the propitious direction both in relation to the external kerbs and in relation to the passage and the internal chamber spaces. It is interesting in this respect to note the prevalence of ‘iconic’ solar and lunar symbols on the Knowth and Dowth kerbstones and on the illuminated backstone of Loughcrew cairn T, discussed above.
The bodily motion involved in moving around the temple kerbs in an unconfined space is utterly different from that experienced inside the temple, where movement is linear and differentiated through constrictions and widening and changes of directions of the passages, chamber spaces, and cells. Within the temple, movement is linear, finite, and directional. One reaches a destination, an end point of the journey. Moving around the kerb is an expression of the endless and the infinite, a journey that has no beginning and no end. Given the association between the temples and death, we can suggest that the passages and chambers objectify a journey from life to death and another world beyond in which experience is transformed through their bodily effects. By contrast, movement around the kerb is a journey for the living and the ceremonies associated with life.
Death and darkness are associated within the temple interiors, a journey taking one away from the sun to a darkened interior. At the great temples of the Boyne valley, one has to cross over an external barrier, the entrance kerbstone, in order to enter into the passage, physically climb over the external membrane of the kerb secluding and protecting the temple interior from the outside world. The decorated stones could only be experienced by those entering the temple, and they remain hidden and relatively inaccessible. The somatic experience of the passage orthostats is very intimate insofar as their presence is constantly felt, impinging on the body that cannot help but brush beside them, a constant physical contact. The spaciousness of the chambers requires physically reaching out to contact the stones. The corbelled roofs create recessive and concentric rising spaces, becoming more and more confined as they rise up above. Decorated stones in the passages are always more visible when travelling out of the temples, as the light from the entrance falls against the designs when the body no longer blocks the light from behind. Tactile orientation and experience would be more significant on the way in than on the way out.
Light, Darkness, and the Transformation of Experience
The temple interiors were designed to transform human bodily and sensory experience, creating different experiential states and sensory skills and capacities. Bradley (1989b) has suggested that light and darkness were important features of the design of megalithic temples. He contrasts temples L and T at Loughcrew, arguing that while most of the motifs at cairn L were hidden in dark areas of the temple interiors, in the cells, the backstone of the end cell of temple T is illuminated. He suggests that by increasing the length of the passage on Irish monuments, it was possible to focus the sun’s rays on the central chamber and specific motifs within them. Lewis-Williams and Pearce suggest that the overwhelming effect of being in the temple interiors was one of sensory deprivation:‘If one stays still for long enough the silence and darkness envelope one; they seep deeper and deeper into one’ (Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2005: 208). But such ‘sensory deprivation’only relates to vision and the experience of the outside landscape. The reverse can be argued: rather than creating conditions for sensory deprivation, the experience of being inside the temple heightens sensory perception in relation to the burial and other rites that take place. Inside the temple a person is removed from everyday experience and transported into a world in which normal sensory faculties are altered. Touch and feel become essential and heightened because the spatial and visual orientation afforded by the outside world is lost. Temple air is still and silent, but smell and sound are intensified within this confined space. Lewis-Williams and Pearce themselves make the important point that the sound of the orthostats being picked, and the manner in which that sound would have been amplified within the temple, would have been an important sensory dimension of its experience. Hammering a stone may have been a way of connecting with it, activating it, giving it potency—hence the presence of picking of some kind or another on virtually every orthostat within Newgrange and Knowth. In this respect, it is interesting to note O’Kelly’s comment that the original shape of Newgrange, with its flat top, rounded sides, and façade was that of a huge drum (M. O’Kelly 1982: 73). The temple interiors both enriched and altered sensory perception in important ways.
The outer stones of temples with short passages, such as cairns L and T at Loughcrew or at Dowth, can be seen very clearly without artificial illumination, but as one moves down the passage into the chamber, the visibility of the motifs becomes successively diminished, and experience of the stones changes from being predominantly visual to tactile. This goes hand in hand with the sound effects inside the temple interior. Those associated with the moving and active body become amplified, the sounds associated with the weather, animals, birds, and people outside successively diminished. Sight within the temple becomes intimate rather than a distanced gaze. It is restricted to the stones themselves.
By contrast, the kerbs are meant to be seen rather than touched. The encounter with them is primarily visual. The experience of the decorated stones within the temple may have been as much tactile as visual—motifs whose presence was felt rather than seen. The kerbstones are public ‘front’ spaces designed to impress. It is highly likely that they were not just meant to impress the cairn-using group, but also outsiders or strangers. The temple itself was a reserved space for insiders—hence the very different form and organisation of the motifs. We have noted that many of the kerbstones at Knowth appear to be consciously designed as framed units. The same is not true of the decorated stones in the passage temple interiors. These have additive and improvised qualities, subject to alteration and change over time. Outside there is an endless repetition of the same themes, whereas inside one experiences unique differentiation of the stones to a much greater degree.
It is probable that many of the decorated orthostats and corbels deep within the dark chambers were never meant to be seen, or perhaps only occasionally. In this respect, there is not such a great distinction between imagery that was entirely hidden within the temple structure and that which was not. They could only be visually experienced by means of artificial illumination. The flickering of the flames that would be required would make the images move and dance. In the final stages of the application of decoration to the temple interiors, we witness a movement away from depicting individual motifs to a concern with covering both the surfaces of individual stones and the temple interiors with picking, either diffuse or dense, emphasizing the surfaces and contours of the stones. This may be understood as putting increasing emphasis on feeling and form as opposed to visual sensory perception. It may also relate to an increasing importance on acoustic experience in the drum-shaped Boyne temples. Altering the stones was intimately related to the bodily impact they had on people entering and exiting from the passages and chambers. They orchestrated and altered their somatic experience in a radically different manner.
The external kerbstones open to public view and inspection at Knowth and Newgrange now provided an entirely unreliable guide to what would be encountered inside the temples, and this may relate to an increasing separation between ceremonies for the living taking place outside and ceremonies for the dead in the internal architectural spaces. The new emphasis given to decorating the entire internal spaces of the monuments contrasts with that put on framing, emphasizing, and differentiating between individual stones on the outside. The external kerbstones are visually captivating in a way that most of the internal stones are not. Inside the temple spaces there are relatively few arresting images. Another way of understanding this is to suggest that the experience of the outside of the temples was primarily placial and related to the landscape beyond, that inside the temple primarily temporal and related to movement from the domain of life and the living to that of death and the ancestors. More ‘work’ and time is required to experience the temple interiors, while the kerbstones can be experienced in a much more passive manner.
The graphic imagery can be understood in terms of the bodily and sensory transformation of experience in relation to both temple and landscape. For example, it has been suggested already that the spiral may be a material metaphor for a journey from the outside to the inside, into an ever more involuted space, the circle a never-ending circuit of movement around the cairn kerbs. There is no literal narrative, just as there are few, if any, literal (truly iconic) images. The dominant motif forms are polysemous, incorporative and conceptual devices susceptible to a wide range of meanings and referential links. They are about ideas and conceptual links rather than representations of real things in the world. They are expressing conceptual connections between temple and landscape, going in and going out, the dematerialisation of human identities in the mortuary process, crossing one space to another, transitions, seasonality, route-ways, journeying in life and in death. So the imagery is not an expression of things or material realities so much as a concern with conceptual space-time relationships and transformations on a nested and ever-widening geographical and social scale.
These are:
The temple exterior and the temple interior.
The relationship of temples to one another.
The relationship of the temples to their surrounding landscapes and local geography.
The relationship of the temples to the wider landscape and social geography of Ireland.
The relationship of the temples to others across the Irish Sea.
O’Sullivan’s (1996) model of temporal development suggests both significant change in the character of the decoration and important differences among Dowth, Knowth, and Newgrange. At Newgrange the pick dressing of the orthostats seems to have been deliberately designed to neutralise and remove the power of preexisting motifs within the temple. The personalities of individual stones had to be collectively subsumed, whereas at Knowth subsequent pick dressing was often additive. At both temples there appears to have been a changing emphasis from the decoration of individual stones treated independently from one another to a concern for decorating the entire architectural space, conceived as a whole, rather than as a series of independent and separate elements (orthostats, chamber recesses, and so on). This created an even greater contrast between the external kerbstones and the internal architectural spaces in terms of differences between their relative heterogeneity and their relative homogeneity, respectively, and concomitantly their somatic effects.
