Neolithic Ireland
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The Basic Design of a Neolithic Period Tomb
Chamber - this is a stone-lined space in which the corpse would have been laid. The body was sometimes cremated and the ashes placed in a stone basin or in an earthenware pot. Other times, the body was buried. There seems to be no preference between burial and cremation: often both methods were used in the same tomb. Larger chambers can hold 20 people standing, others are no bigger than a box 1m2.
Doorway - consists of two upright flat stones facing each other and a lintel stone above. These stones seem to have been symbolically important, as they were always present, even though the other parts of the tomb varied considerably over the centuries.
Mound - in most tomb designs, the whole structure was covered in a mound of clay and stones, so that all that was visible from the outside was a mound with a stone doorway.
There were four basic types of tomb that were used at different times in varying parts of Ireland. Some of these are also found in other parts of Europe, such as Great Britain and Brittany.
Court Tombs
The earliest type of stone tomb found in Ireland is the court tomb, built mainly between 4000 and 3500 BC. There are more than 400 found almost entirely in the northern half of the country, being particularly common around Sligo.
The tomb itself consists of a number of square or rectangular chambers in a line, each made from flat stones standing upright (orthostats) and other flat stones across the top. A mound is then constructed over the whole tomb, usually about 25m long and about 15m wide. The line of the tomb is from west to east and the doorway into the tomb faces east. The court tomb has a flat semi-circular area in front of the doorway known as a 'court'. The court is paved with stone and surrounded by standing stones. Presumably the court was used for rituals during the funeral.
Portal Tombs or Dolmens
Portal tombs appear to have developed from court tombs. They are so-called because of the prominence of the doorway. As well as other vertical stones, they have two very large stones forming the doorway and an enormous stone, which not only covers the doorway but also covers the whole tomb. This 'capstone' can be anything from 20 to 90 tonnes in weight and slopes with its highest point at the doorway. Portal tombs are not and were never covered in a mound but stand with the stones exposed.
Passage Tombs
Passage tombs or passage graves were built in the period from 3500 to 3000 BC. There are about 240. Unlike other tombs which are isolated, passage tombs tend to be built in 'cemeteries', that is, collections of a large number of such tombs.
Passage tombs are a development of court tombs: the chamber is large and often cross-shaped, with a narrow stone-lined passage leading to it. The mound is circular and can be enormous. The biggest of these is more than 80m in diameter. Newgrange at Brú na Bóinne in County Meath is the best example of a passage tomb and is open to the public.
Excavations around Newgrange show that originally the front of the mound was faced with white stones. All the way around the base of the mound was a ring of large stones covered in engravings. There are also engravings inside the passage and chamber. However, these are the only Neolithic tombs to show any sort of engravings. The patterns are abstract ones - spirals, diamonds and zigzags, although it has been speculated that some of them represent the phases of the moon.
While the court tombs always faced east, the passages of the passage tombs point in many different directions. Many were built to align with the sun so that the sun's rays could shine down the passage on a significant date: for example, passages facing southeast catch the rays at sunrise on the winter solstice, as happens in Newgrange. Passages facing west were aligned with the setting sun at the equinox. Some of the bigger mounds might have had two separate passages, each aligned to a different solar event.
In smaller tombs, the roof of the chamber was made from flat slabs of rock placed directly on the side walls. For larger chambers of the bigger tombs such as Newgrange, this was not possible as the span is too wide. A different technique called 'corbelling' was used. A first layer of slabs rested on the walls and projected a short way, the next layer projected further, and so on until the final slab covered the hole in the centre. This gave the chamber a crude domed shape.
Passage tombs were usually built on the tops of mountains so that they could be seen from a long way off. The 'Fairy Castle' cairn on the top of Two Rock Mountain just south of Dublin, for example, can be seen 40 or 50 miles away (about 60 or 80km).
Wedge Tombs
The Wedge Tomb is the smallest and latest of the tomb types. Here the chamber has become just a box. The passage widens to the doorway, in the wedge shape that gives the tomb its name. The whole thing is capped with flat stones and covered in a very small mound, sometimes only one metre high. Nowadays, the mound has been eroded away, leaving only the box-like stones of the tomb. Wedge tombs are usually built about three-quarters the way up a mountain, and the doorway nearly always faces southwest.
The burial 'gallery' is divided into two chambers. Originally, it would have had a mound over it. Archaeological excavation has revealed the remains of at least eight adults and four children buried in these tombs.
Burial.
Three modes of disposing of the dead were practised in ancient Ireland.
First mode: the body was buried as at present. Second: sometimes the body of a king or warrior was placed standing up in the grave, fully accoutred and armed.
Third: the body was burned and the ashes were deposited in the grave in an ornamental urn of baked clay.
Often that sort of stone monument now known as a cromlech was constructed, formed of one great flat stone lying on the tops of several large standing stones, thus enclosing a rude chamber in which one or more bodies or urns were placed. These cromlechs--which are sometimes wrongly called druids' altars--remain in every part of Ireland; and skeletons, and urns containing burnt bones, have been found under many of them.
A mound of stones raised over a grave is called a cairn. In old times people had a fancy to bury on the tops of hills; and the summits of very many hills in Ireland are crowned with cairns, under every one of which--in a stone coffin--reposes some chief renowned in the olden time. Sometimes these mounds were of clay. All contain chambers. The greatest mounds in Ireland are those of Newgrange, Dowth, and Knowth, on the Boyne, five miles above Drogheda.
At the burial of important persons funeral games were celebrated: these gave origin to many of the Aenachs or fairs.
