Barrow - bowl-barrow, Raheen, Co. Galway

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Barrows

Barrow – bowl-barrow, Raheen, Co. Galway

In a level field in Raheen, County Galway, a low circular mound sits encircled by a ditch and an outer bank, the whole structure measuring roughly 28 metres north to south and nearly 26 metres east to west.

At its highest point the mound rises to about one and a half metres, modest enough that a passing walker might take it for a natural undulation in the ground rather than a deliberate construction laid down thousands of years ago. A bowl-barrow of this type is a prehistoric funerary monument, typically a raised earthen mound used for burial, ringed by a quarry ditch from which material was dug to build up the mound itself, and sometimes by an additional outer bank beyond the ditch. The form is found across Ireland and Britain, generally associated with the Bronze Age, though the precise date of this particular example has not been established.

The structure at Raheen has survived reasonably well, though not without the quiet encroachments that centuries of farming leave on ancient earthworks. A field wall has been built directly over the outer bank on the eastern side, and a pathway has disturbed the interior at both east and south. The mound itself is somewhat worn down on its southern face, and there is a slight depression at the centre, which may reflect the collapse of a burial chamber beneath, or simply the cumulative effect of time and use on the surface. Two further barrows lie to the south-west of this one, suggesting that this corner of Raheen was once a place of deliberate ceremonial or funerary significance, a small cluster of monuments in what is now ordinary agricultural land.

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