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Crop marks caused by warm weather have revealed a buried henge monument
in a field to the south of Newgrange.
Credit: Anthony
Murphy and Ken Williams/Ireland National Monuments Service
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This year’s exceptionally hot summer has proved to be something of a
bonus for archaeologists in Ireland and the Britain. In Ireland, the heatwave
dried the land of the Boyne Valley revealing the shadows of previously unknown
circular enclosures. Indeed, the National
Monuments Service has been dealing with a large volume of reports of hidden
structures from around the country.
Anthony Murphy of Mythical Ireland and Ken
Williams of Shadows and Stone, using drones, photographed previously
unrecorded features in the fields near Newgrange. One of the images appears to
be a large henge. A henge is a circular monument which would originally have been
composed of uprights made of wood or stone. For our prehistoric ancestors,
henges are believed to have had a religious significance.
Several types of ritual enclosure, ranging in
date from the Neolithic to the Iron Age, are to be found in Ireland. Over fifty
henges have been recorded and classified into three forms, termed embanked
enclosures (71%), internally ditched henges (23%) and variant henge forms (7%).
In Ireland there are about eleven
concentrations of henges. One of these concentrations, consisting of three
henges, has been identified just south of the Boyle River. Towards the end of
the Neolithic Period there is evidence in the form of henges for larger
gathering. There is typically little, if
any, evidence of occupation in a henge, although they may contain ritual
structures such as stone and timber circles. Several henges
are located within 2km of passage tombs.
While the predominant form of henge in Britain
has internally ditched banks, the majority of earthen embanked henges in Ireland
have no obvious ditch on the inside of the bank. They occur mainly in the
eastern part of the country and in counties Sligo, Roscommon, Clare and
Limerick. The Boyne region features a notable concentration of henges. Almost
half of the total number of henges recorded in Ireland are concentrated in
County Meath. The monuments are mostly located along the Boyne.
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| Newgrange Passage tomb, County Meath |
Murphy and Williams notified the Department of Culture, Heritage and the
Gaeltacht of their discovery. The
National Monuments Service carried out its own aerial reconnaissance of the Brú
na Bóinne site. The henge is believed to have been built some 500 years after
Newgrange, which dates from 3,200 BC, making it older than the Great Wall of
China, the Great Egyptian Pyramid of Gizza and Stonehenge in Britain.
Archaeologist Dr Geraldine Stout states:
“I believe Newgrange is just the centre of a much larger sacred landscape
and I think there was a whole series of facilities built for the pilgrims
coming to Newgrange in prehistory. Generally, we believe these henge monuments
were built up to 500 years after the main use of Newgrange and in a lot of
cases they actually enclose the area of monuments.”
The enclosure is estimated to have a diameter of about 200 meters. ‘Dronehenge’, as it is referred to in Archaeology
Ireland, encompasses two concentric rings of post-holes, surrounding an
inner enclosure formed by a series of segmented ditches.
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| Over the centuries, the settlements disappear and farming takes place Photo: Courtesy BBC News |
A BBC News report on the
increase in the appearance of “crop marks” in Wales provides more information
on how this works and some more examples of sites which have appeared across
Wales. Archaeologist Louise Barker of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and
Historical Monuments of Wales explains,
“It’s
like a painting that comes out into the fieldscapes. We’re seeing new things
with all of these cropmarks; we probably haven’t seen anything like this since
the 1970s, the last time there was a really, really dry summer like this.” (BBC News Report)
It has been suggested that these sites would
have been above-ground structures which fell into a state of disrepair over
centuries and were eventually buried beneath the soil.
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| When the land dries out in the prolonged heat, the old fortifications retain moisture, so crops are more visible Photo: Courtesy BBC News |
Most ancient settlements added fortification
or drainage ditches around them. Today, traces of these structures appear as
darker green areas due to their retention of more nutrients and moisture than
the surrounding ground. The crop marks are made by vegetation drawing on the better
nutrients and water supplies trapped in long-gone fortification ditches -
leading to lush green growth that stands out.
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Archaeologists and volunteers at work on the excavation trench near the
Newgrange passage tomb. The mound of the tomb is behind the trees on the
skyline.
Credit: Matthew
and Geraldine Stout
|
Recently, archaeologists in Ireland also
discovered a new 5,500-year-old passage tomb
at Dowth Hall, close to centre of the Brú na Bóinne,
which is being called "the most significant megalithic find in Ireland in
the last 50 years". The new passage tomb contains rock art is c 40m in
diameter, approximately half the size of Newgrange. To date, two burial
chambers have been discovered within the western part of the of the main
passage tomb, over which a large stone cairn was raised.
The six kerbstones identified so far formed
part of a ring of stones that followed the cairn perimeter. One of the
kerbstones is heavily decorated with Neolithic carvings and is one of the most
impressive discoveries of megalithic art in Ireland for decades. Archaeologists
believe that the people who built this ancient resting place were likely to be descendants
of Ireland’s first farmers.
An unusually high number of henges and ancient
sites have been found over the decades along the River Boyne. Together, they
make up the Brú na Bóinne UNESCO
World Heritage site. Murphy and Williams have added to the record of such
monuments and continue to discover new examples with their drones, including a
possible barrow cemetery.
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