Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Lissalondoon, Co. Galway

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Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb – wedge tomb, Lissalondoon, Co. Galway

In the townland of Lissalondoon in County Galway, a wedge tomb survives from the late Neolithic or early Bronze Age, a period roughly spanning 2500 to 2000 BC when this particular form of megalithic burial was being raised across Ireland, with the greatest concentrations in the west and south-west.

Wedge tombs take their name from their shape: a roofed stone gallery that narrows and lowers toward the rear, typically oriented with the wider, taller entrance facing broadly west or south-west. They are the most numerous class of megalithic tomb in Ireland, yet individually many remain little visited and incompletely documented, sitting quietly in farmland or on hillside pasture without marker or signage.

The Lissalondoon example belongs to this wider tradition of communal stone-built burial, constructed by farming communities who had settled the Irish landscape and who used such monuments over generations, sometimes interring cremated remains alongside pottery and small grave goods. County Galway holds a notable scatter of wedge tombs, many of them in upland or marginal terrain that has seen little subsequent disturbance, which is part of why so many have survived at all. The specific history of this particular structure, including its dimensions, condition, and any finds associated with it, remains to be fully recorded in the public domain.

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