Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Doire Na Sagart, Co. Cork

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Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb – wedge tomb, Doire Na Sagart, Co. Cork

Peat cutting does not usually count as archaeology, but on the upper southern slopes of Knockacommeen Mountain in County Cork, it exposed exactly that.

A wedge tomb, the characteristic late Neolithic and early Bronze Age burial monument built from large stone slabs and tapering slightly from west to east, had been sitting undisturbed beneath the bog until the cutaway face revealed its roofstone and part of its southern side.

What emerged is compact but structurally coherent. The roofstone measures 2.5 metres by 1.6 metres and is only 0.17 metres thick; it rests on sidestones, a backstone at the eastern end, and a pad-stone set on top of the western end of the southern side wall, a small but telling piece of construction detail. The chamber itself runs east to west, 1.95 metres long and just under a metre wide at the western entrance, narrowing slightly to 0.84 metres at the closed eastern end. Both the northern and southern walls are each formed by two slabs, and the eastern end is sealed by a low backstone standing just 0.30 metres high. A possible outer-wall stone is also visible immediately south of the chamber, set back slightly from the western end, hinting that the original monument may have had a more substantial enclosing structure around it.

What makes the location particularly interesting is the density of similar monuments nearby. A second wedge tomb stands roughly 700 metres to the west-southwest, and the remains of a possible third lie within forest about 1.1 kilometres in the same direction. Whether these represent a community of the dead, a territorial marker, or simply a landscape that happened to suit the builders of a particular era, the clustering on these slopes above Doire Na Sagart suggests that Knockacommeen was not a casual choice.

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