Friday, September 28, 2018

New Henge Appears Near Newgrange


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

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.
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.
Over the centuries, the settlements disappear and farming takes place
Photo: Courtesy BBC News
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.
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.
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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