Boulder-burial, Ballynacarriga, Co. Cork

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Burial Sites

Boulder-burial, Ballynacarriga, Co. Cork

In a level pasture at the foot of a north-west-facing slope in Ballynacarriga, a large flat stone sits on the ground with the quiet authority of something placed rather than fallen.

This is a boulder-burial, a form of prehistoric monument found almost exclusively in south-west Ireland, in which a substantial cover-stone is raised slightly above the ground on one or more support stones, creating a low, table-like structure over what was likely a burial. They are easy to miss, lacking the height and drama of standing stones or the obvious enclosure of a stone circle, and this particular example is modest even by those standards.

The cover-stone here measures 2.2 metres by 1.8 metres and sits about 1.1 metres above the ground, with one support stone visible beneath it. The site was recorded by Seán Ó Nualláin in 1978 and later included in the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Notably, it sits approximately 100 metres south-south-west of a second boulder-burial in the same area, which is unusual. Boulder-burials are generally thought to date to the Bronze Age, and their concentration in counties Cork and Kerry suggests a regional funerary tradition, though relatively little is known about the communities who built them or what, precisely, they placed beneath the stones.

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