Carrowkeel Megalithic Cemetery - County Sligo

Lough Arrow viewed from
Carrowkeel Megalithic Cemetery

Carrowkeel Neolithic or New Stone Age passage tomb cemetery is situated in south County Sligo, near the village of Castlebaldwin.  The tombs are between 5400 and 5100 years old (3400 to 3100 BC), and predate the Pyramids of Egypt's by 500-800 years. Carrowkeel is one of four major passage tomb cemeteries in Ireland (the other three are Brú na Bóinne, Lough Crew, and Carrowmore). A total of 14 tombs have been recorded in this cemetery. Six more passage tombs are located close by in what archaeologists call the Keshcorran complex.

A passage tomb consists of a narrow stone-lined passage leading to a chamber. Other smaller chambers may open off the main chamber. The passage and chambers are roofed with capstones but larger chambers tend to be corbelled. A round cairn covers the actual tomb and the cairn is usually surrounded by kerbstones.

The mountain range containing Carrowkeel Cemetery is called the Bricklieve Mountains, which means the speckled mountains in Irish. This may refer to their appearance when more quartz rock survived on the outside of the cairns, causing them to sparkle in the sun. The Carrowkeel cairns are built on hilltops at altitudes between 240 and 360 meters.  

A common feature of Irish cairns is that the passage of one monument is frequently oriented to another prominent cairn, as well as the rising or setting position of the sun and moon. This occurs at several of the Carrowkeel cairns. For example, Cairn B opens towards Knocknarea and ruined Cairn M is oriented to Kesh Cairn. The tombs were largely intact when rediscovered and hurriedly excavated in 1911. The cairns were designated at this time by letters and this naming convention remains today.

Archaeologists do not know what ritual function, in addition to acting as burial places for the dead, the passage tombs served for these cultures. A reverence for the sun is suggested by the alignment of many of the passages to the rising or setting of the sun on yearly solstice or equinox events.

The Cairns

Three Cairns at Carrowkeel
Photo: bettlebrox - www.flickr.com

Cairn B is 22 metres in diameter, making it one of the larger cairns in the Bricklieve group. The passage is about 3 metres long and widens to a small chamber. The entrance is high up in the body of the cairn. In 2010 a local archaeologist discovered the first panel of megalithic art recorded at Carrowkeel consisting of two small spirals.

Cairn F is the largest and most important of the cairns at Carrowkeel. It has a diameter of 26 metres and probably stood 8 - 10 metres high. The cairn contains a very large well-built chamber formed from massive squared limestone slabs with five compartments, two at each side and an end recess. The passage is about 8m long.

Cairn G is the best preserved of the Carrowkeel monuments and is a fine example of a cruciform Irish Passage Cairn. It is a classic Irish passage tomb, consisting of a short passage leading to a central chamber with three equally spaced side chambers. The most interesting feature of this tomb is the roofbox situated above the entrance.  The sun enters the chamber through the roofbox at sunset around the summer solstice and illuminates the back of the chamber. The only other known roofbox was discovered at Newgrange .

Cairn G showing roofbox

Carrowkeel Cairn G is estimated to be 700 years older than Newgrange and is smaller and less sophisticated. The passage is two meters long compared with nineteen meters at Newgrange.

Cairn K was also constructed with the classic cruciform shaped chamber and has an intact dry-stone corbelled roof. The 7 metre-long passage is orientated to Queen Maeve's Cairn on the top of Knocknarea. It has a diameter of about 21 meters, is some 6 meters high, and is surrounded by a thick layer of bog, which has covered any kerbstones. The items found during the excavation of Cairn K in 1911 were typical of the finds in the other cairns: pieces of the Neolithic pottery, known as Carrowkeel Ware since that time; cremated human remains, chalk balls, antler pins and pendants.

Hut Sites

Nearby, at Mullaghfarna, archaeologists have identified more than 150 small stone lined hollows with entrance features which are believed to be Neolithic huts or enclosures.  Their circular stone foundations, with diameters ranging from 8 m to 18 m, still mark the spots where the tent-like huts stood. These hut sites may date from the third millennium BC. In 2003, trial excavations at three of the sites produced finds from the Neolithic/Bronze Age including:  chert scrapers, a flint knife, fragments of cremated bone, decorated pottery and charcoal. Similar objects were discovered during the excavation of hut sites on Knocknarea in 2000.

This prehistoric village is likely to have been connected to the Carrowkeel cairns and may have housed the workers who built the passage tombs, or perhaps their descendants, who attended some ancient ritual there.

Conclusion

The earliest evidence we have for human occupation in Ireland dates from around 8000 BC. For the next 4000 years our ancestors survived by hunting, fishing and gathering wild plants. The gradual introduction of farming to Ireland around 4000 BC brought domesticated cereals and animals from Britain and the European mainland. Shortly after this time, people began to build megalithic tombs such as those at Carrowkeel, Carrowmore, Kesh and Knocknarea.

All told, there are 27 passage tomb monuments in the Carrowkeel-Keshcorran Complex, a total that includes three monuments located nearby but not in the Bricklieve Mountains. Archaeologists do not know what ritual function these passage tombs served, in addition to acting as burial places for the dead, for these cultures. The alignment of many of the passages to the rising or setting of the sun on yearly solstice or equinox suggests reverence to the sun. The presence of items not normally associated with the everyday life of these people and also the discovery of prehistoric art also point to a ritual function for these sites.

YouTube Video by Colm Sweeney

Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery, Co. Sligo

Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery - Tomb 51

Today, Ireland is experiencing unprecedented austerity measures, farmers are unable to feed their cattle and fish stocks are depleted. However, the situation was not always so dire. Over 7,000 years ago, the rich marine resources around our shores enabled our ancestors to develop a more settled way of life even as hunter-gatherers and to, eventually, become some of Western Europe’s first farmers.

More than 6,000 years ago, the Stone Age peoples of Western Europe began to build stone monuments over their dead as tombs and ceremonial places. This was the beginning of what has become known as the megalithic tradition of the Neolithic period. The reason for this cultural change in Neolithic Europe was largely unknown for many years.

Carrowmore, Co. Sligo, is the largest cemetery of megalithic tombs in Ireland and is also among the country’s oldest, with dates ranging between 4,500 – 3,500 BC. Archaeologists have recorded over sixty tombs of which some thirty are visible today. The oldest tombs at Carrowmore were built more than 2,000 years before the pyramids of Egypt. The idea of erecting megalithic tombs developed within Stone Age societies of Western Europe in the fifth millennium BC during the transition between the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods.

Archaeologists believe that originally there may have been a 100 and, possibly, more tombs in the Carrowmore cemetery. However, over the past 300 years, quarrying and land clearance have destroyed many of them. In his survey of the area in 1837, George Petrie marked and numbered 68 sites at Carrowmore.

Carrowmore megalithic cemetery covers an area of about one square kilometre.  Most of the tombs have been arranged in an oval-shaped layout and the entrances tend to face the central part of the cemetery. The meaning and function of these early stone monuments remain one of the mysteries of archaeology. It is known that the Megalithic tradition died out about 5,000 years ago when it was at its peak. Well known monuments such as Stonehenge, Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth, were all built around this time.

There are some 1,500 recorded Megalithic monuments in Ireland. These ancient monuments have been classified into four types: court tombs, portal tombs, passage tombs and wedge tombs. Cremation was the most common way of disposing of the dead in passage tombs. Inhumation was mainly used in the case of portal tombs.

No passage tombs have been recorded at Carrowmore and only Tomb 51, which is also known as Listoghil, shows the remains of a cairn. This tomb stands at the highest point of the Carrowmore cemetery. It is 34m in diameter making it the largest tomb in the Carrowmore complex. It was partly excavated in the 1990s by the Swedish archaeologist Goran Burenhult.

Tomb 51 - Central Chamber

The central chamber was constructed as a rectangular cist or chamber and covered with a flat, limestone roof-slab. In 1993, prehistoric artwork was discovered on the front of the roof-slab.

During the building of this tomb, ritual activities took place involving extensive fires and these have been dated to 3,650 – 3,450 BC. A number of pits had also been dug during these ritual activities. Two cremations containing the remains of several humans were deposited in the circle behind the southern and western kerbstones and these were dated to 3,550 BC. The recovery of a piece of human skull dated to 3,500 BC shows that inhumations took place within the building period.

Excavation of Tomb No. 4 revealed 32 kilos of cremated human bone which had been deposited in the

Tomb 4

central chamber and in two secondary cists. It is believed that this amount of bone fragments represents as many as 50 individuals. The main grave goods recovered from this tomb were mushroom-headed antler pins which had been burnt together with the dead bodies on the funeral pyre. The secondary cists also contained stone beads.

Typical artefacts from the Carrowmore megalithic cemetery consist of mushroom-headed antler pins, stone/clay balls, beads and pendants. Archaeologists believe that the earliest monuments were built by people who were mainly hunter-gatherers but were turning to cattle breeding. The rich marine resources in this area made it possible for people to settle down on the peninsula and develop a relatively stable settlement pattern as hunter-gatherers, probably as early as 8,000 – 9,000 years ago (7,000 – 6,000 BC). Fishing, hunting for seal and other mammals, and the gathering of shellfish contributed to the development of a social structure normally found among farmers.

The tombs in the Carrowmore complex may have been signs of prestige in this ancient society or may have marked the tribe’s ceremonial and burial place. Each tomb probably belonged to a separate clan or extended family. With the passing of time, the settled pattern of life, together with the growing population, required a more active system of food production and farming was born.

The earliest dates from the excavated tombs at Carrowmore centre around 5,000 BC with the latest about 3,000 BC. Archaeologists believe that most of the monuments were erected and used between 4,300 and 3,500 BC. All of the tombs had been used for secondary burials during the late Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages.

The dates from Carrowmore confirm what is known about the development of the megalithic traditions in Brittany and France, where very early megalithic activity can be associated with late Mesolithic and early Neolithic societies forming complex social systems based on a rich maritime economy.

Based on ‘The Megalithic Cemetery of Carrowmore, Co. Sligo’ – Goran Burenhult (2001)