A cairn, in the broadest sense, is a deliberate mound of stones raised by human hands, and in an Irish context these structures most often date to the Neolithic or Bronze Age, serving as burial monuments, territorial markers, or both. The Burren is unusually rich in such remains, partly because the thin soils and bare rock have offered little incentive for the kind of intensive agriculture that elsewhere in Ireland has levelled or buried so much of the prehistoric record.