Megalithic structure, Carrowmore, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Megalithic Tombs
Carrowmore, on the western fringes of Sligo town, contains one of the largest and oldest complexes of megalithic monuments in Ireland, a landscape so dense with prehistoric stone that individual structures within it can slip quietly past formal documentation.
This particular megalithic structure is one of those, recorded but not yet fully catalogued in publicly accessible form, which is itself a small curiosity in a place that archaeologists have been puzzling over for well over a century.
The Carrowmore complex sits in a broad, low-lying bowl beneath the outline of Knocknarea to the west, the flat-topped hill traditionally associated with the legendary queen Medb and her unexcavated cairn. The monuments at Carrowmore are generally understood to be passage tombs and dolmens, some dating to around 4000 BCE or earlier, making them among the earliest megalithic constructions in Atlantic Europe. A dolmen in this context is typically a large capstone supported by upright stones, forming a chamber that once held human remains and was subsequently covered by a mound of earth or smaller stones. Decades of excavation, particularly work carried out in the 1970s and 1980s by the Swedish archaeologist Göran Burenhult, have revealed cremated bone, stone beads, and evidence of repeated use across long periods of prehistory. The broader site is managed by the Office of Public Works and a number of the tombs are accessible to visitors, though the complex contains far more structures than the well-trodden central area suggests.