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 spread of passage tombs, dolmens, and stone circles that has been dated by some researchers to as early as 4000 BC, placing it among the earliest such complexes in western Europe.

Within this remarkable landscape sits a megalithic structure that has yet to be fully documented in publicly available records, quietly occupying ground that has held human significance for millennia.

The Carrowmore complex as a whole sits in a low-lying bowl of land, with the great cairn of Knocknarea visible on the ridge to the west. The individual monuments at Carrowmore typically consist of a central dolmen, a type of portal tomb formed from upright stones capped by a large flat stone, surrounded by a circle of boulders. Excavations carried out across the complex during the twentieth century, notably by the Swedish archaeologist Göran Burenhult in the 1970s and 1980s, recovered cremated human remains and other material pointing to repeated ceremonial use over long periods. The site as a whole is in State care and managed as a visitor attraction, though not every structure within the wider townland falls under the same level of active interpretation or protection, and individual monuments can be easy to overlook without a detailed map.

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