Boulder-burial, Garranes, Co. Cork

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Burial Sites

Boulder-burial, Garranes, Co. Cork

A large, roughly rectangular boulder sits propped above the ground on four smaller support stones in a field in Garranes, Co. Cork, and if you did not know what you were looking at, you might take it for a quirk of the landscape, a rock left at an odd angle by chance or by a farmer tidying a field.

It is neither. This is a boulder-burial, a monument type found almost exclusively in the southwest of Ireland, in which a substantial capstone is raised off the ground by a cluster of low supports, creating a low, box-like chamber beneath.

Boulder-burials are among the less-discussed prehistoric monument types in Ireland, partly because they are easy to overlook and partly because their date and function are still not entirely settled. They are generally understood to belong to the Bronze Age, and they are concentrated in counties Cork and Kerry with very few examples elsewhere. This particular example sits on a gentle north-facing slope of a low hill, surrounded by rolling pasture. The boulder itself measures 1.8 metres by 1.5 metres and stands roughly 0.8 metres above the ground, held up by its four support stones. That combination of scale and simplicity is fairly typical of the type: no elaborate passage, no kerb, no surrounding earthwork, just a stone raised with deliberate intention by people whose names and exact purposes are long lost.

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