Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Toormore, Co. Cork

Despite being a funerary monument by design, the five-week excavation carried out here in the summer of 1990 turned up no human remains whatsoever. What it did produce, deposited on the north side of the entrance, was a bronze axe and two pieces of raw copper, left together as a single deliberate cache. Whether this represents an offering, a concealment, or something else entirely, nobody can say with certainty.

Wedge tombs are the most numerous megalithic tomb type in Ireland, characterised by a gallery that narrows and lowers from one end to the other, typically oriented with the wider, taller entrance facing west or south-west. The Toormore example follows this pattern closely. Its chamber, formed by two roughly parallel rows of upright stones set into foundation trenches, runs approximately north-east to south-west and measures 4.25 metres in length. At the western entrance the chamber stands 1.26 metres high; by the time it reaches the closed north-eastern end, sealed with a backstone slab, that height has dropped to 0.90 metres. The width narrows correspondingly, from 1.88 metres at the entrance to 1.20 metres at the rear. One of what were probably two overlapping roofstones survives. Radiocarbon dating places its construction in the later part of the Early Bronze Age, somewhere between 1700 and 1500 BC, and there are signs of intermittent use through the later prehistoric and historic periods. Notably, no cairn or mound appears to have covered the structure, which sets it slightly apart from some other examples of the type. Following the excavation, the chamber was restored in September 1990.