19/03/2021
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Poulnabrone dolmen is
Location parish of Kilcorney, the Burren County Clare Ireland
Type Portal tomb
History
Periods Neolithic
Excavation dates 1986, 1988
Poulnabrone dolmen (Poll na mBrón in Irish, meaning "hole of the quern stones" (bró in Irish)) is a portal tomb - one of approximately 172 in Ireland It dates back to the Neolithic period, probably between 4200 BC and 2900 BC
The dolmen consists of a twelve-foot, thin, slab-like, tabular capstone (horizontal) supported by two sets of slender upright (vertical) parallel portal stones, which support the capstone 1.8 m (6 ft) from the ground, creating a chamber in a 9 m (30 ft) low cairn. The cairn helped stabilize the tomb chamber, and would have been no higher during the Neolithic. The entrance faces north and is crossed by a low sill stone.
Excavations
Poulnabrone
A crack was discovered in the eastern portal stone in 1985. Following the resulting collapse, the dolmen was dismantled, and the cracked stone was replaced. Excavations during that time (1986, 1988) found that 33 people, both adults and children, were buried under the monument. Personal items buried with the dead included a polished stone axe, a bone pendant, quartz crystals, weapons and pottery.
There were no intact skeletons, indicating the site was not used as a burial place in the sense that bodies were placed there immediately after or even close to the time of death. Bones were found in the original strata, but jumbled chronologically, so they were not buried sequentially. Only one of the adults seems to have lived past 40 and many of the bones showed signs of arthritis in the upper body. The children had teeth showing signs of illness and malnutrition. Two of the bodies displayed injuries: a skull and rib cage with depressed fractures, healed before death, and an adult male hip bone, pierced by the tip of a stone projectile and not healed, which means the injury occurred not much before the time of death. Those selected for deposit at this site were apparently the members of some sort of elite. Their bodies were left elsewhere to decompose, in a protected location, as none of the bones show any signs of teeth marks. Only the bare bones were then taken here and deposited. As some of them show scorch marks, they may have been ritually purified by fire beforehand.
According to Radiocarbon dating, the tomb was likely used between 3,800 and 3,200 BC. The findings are now at the Clare Museum, Ennis, loaned from the National Museum of Ireland.
In the Bronze Age, (c. 1750 to 1420 BC), a newborn baby was buried in the portico, just outside the entrance.
With its dominating presence on the limestone landscape of the Burren, the tomb was probably a centre for ceremony and ritual until well into the Bronze Age period. It may have also served as a territorial marker in the Neolithic landscape on the important north-south route from Ballyvaughan bay to Kilnaboy. It is possible that the inhabitants of extensive settlements near Kilnaboy erected the structure to delimit the northern border of their territory.
Monumental Ireland