Boulder-burial, Kilkilleen, Co. Cork

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Burial Sites

Boulder-burial, Kilkilleen, Co. Cork

Some archaeological sites are remarkable for what survives.

This one is remarkable for what does not. In level pasture on the eastern shore of Roaringwater Bay in west Cork, there is, by all accounts, nothing to see. A boulder-burial, one of the more unusual monument types of prehistoric Ireland, once stood here, or possibly stood here, and was removed at some point in the past. No visible trace remains.

Boulder-burials are a form of megalithic monument found almost exclusively in the southwest of Ireland, particularly in Cork and Kerry. They consist of a single large, often rounded boulder raised on a small number of supporting stones, creating a low chamber beneath. They are thought to date from the Bronze Age and are generally associated with burial, though the evidence is not always conclusive. The site at Kilkilleen was already uncertain before it disappeared, described as a "possible" example, and by the time B. O'Regan passed on the information that it had been removed, the question of whether it ever formally qualified as a boulder-burial had become moot. It exists now only as a category, a placeholder, a dot on a distribution map pointing to an empty field beside a bay.

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