Megalithic structure, Carrowmore, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic structure, Carrowmore, Co. Sligo

Carrowmore, on the outskirts of Sligo town, contains one of the largest and oldest concentrations of megalithic monuments in Ireland, a landscape so dense with prehistoric stone that individual structures within it can become easy to overlook.

This particular megalithic structure is one of those quieter presences, recorded but not yet fully documented in publicly available form, sitting within a complex that has been drawing antiquarian attention since at least the eighteenth century.

Carrowmore as a whole is thought to date from around 4000 BC or earlier, placing it among the earliest megalithic sites in Atlantic Europe. The monuments here are predominantly passage tombs and dolmens, the latter being portal structures in which large upright stones support a flat capstone, forming a kind of roofed chamber that once held human remains. The site sits in a natural bowl in the landscape, with Knocknarea hill to the west, itself crowned by the unexcavated cairn known as Miosgán Médhbh. Together, the two sites form a ritual landscape of considerable scale, suggesting that the area held ceremonial or funerary significance across many generations of Neolithic communities. Excavations carried out in the latter decades of the twentieth century, particularly by Swedish archaeologists Göran Burenhult and others, produced radiocarbon dates and skeletal material that helped establish Carrowmore's exceptional age and complexity.

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