Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Rannagh, Co. Clare

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Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb – wedge tomb, Rannagh, Co. Clare

What remains of this prehistoric burial monument in Rannagh, County Clare is, by any measure, fragmentary.

A single large sidestone, 2.8 metres long and still standing 1.3 metres high at its south-western end, leans above a low grass-covered cairn on a stretch of rough karst limestone pavement. The cairn itself is modest, barely 40 centimetres at its highest point, and the structure has been robbed out at the north-west, meaning that whoever dismantled it over the centuries removed the very stones that might have told us more about its original form.

Wedge tombs are the most numerous of Ireland's megalithic tomb types, built during the late Neolithic and into the Early Bronze Age, roughly between 2500 and 2000 BC. They take their name from their characteristic shape, wider and taller at the entrance end and tapering toward the back, typically oriented to face the setting sun in the west or south-west. This example follows that general alignment, running north-east to south-west. The surviving sidestone is braced on its north-western face by two small perpendicular slabs, one only 10 centimetres high, doing quiet work to keep the larger stone upright. A fragment broken from the lower north-eastern end of the main stone rests on one of these supports. About five metres to the north-west, three further slabs with a combined length of just over three metres may represent the displaced remains of a second sidestone, though their original position can no longer be confirmed. The karst setting is itself characteristic of the Burren, where dozens of wedge tombs are known, the exposed limestone providing both building material and, perhaps, a landscape that Neolithic communities found significant.

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