Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Gortalicka, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Megalithic Tombs
In the rough pasture of Gortalicka, a slab of stone sits heaped with the accumulated debris of centuries of farming.
Farmers clearing their fields of loose stones have been piling material on top of a prehistoric capstone for so long that the monument beneath is now only partially visible through the overgrowth. What lies under that mound is a wedge tomb, a form of megalithic burial structure built during the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, typically consisting of a roofed stone gallery that narrows from one end to the other, giving the structure its name. This particular example faces west, looking out over the valley of the Slievenaneav stream, an orientation that is characteristic of wedge tombs as a type.
The tomb is modest in scale but carefully made. Its gallery runs ENE to WSW and measures three metres in length, widening from 1.4 metres at the eastern end to 1.9 metres at the western entrance, a proportional taper that is slight but deliberate. A single capstone rests across two sidestones, one on each side of the gallery, both leaning inwards. The eastern end is sealed by an inset backstone, closing off the chamber. Near the northern side of the entrance stands a separate upright slab, just under a metre in height and roughly a metre long, which may once have formed part of a portico, a small ante-chamber or framing structure at the mouth of the gallery that is occasionally found at wedge tombs elsewhere in Ireland. Whether that slab remains in anything close to its original position is uncertain. About 400 metres to the east, a second wedge tomb survives in the same landscape, a reminder that these monuments were rarely entirely isolated; communities returned to the same ground, and the dead were placed within sight of one another.