Carrowkeel is a Neolithic passage tomb cemetery in south County Sligo, close to Boyle, County Roscommon. A Cheathrú Chaol in Irish means “the narrow Quarter”. Circumstantial carbon 14 dating places the graves between 5400 and 5100 years old (3400-3100 BC), so that they are older than the pyramids in Egypt’s Giza plateau 500-800 years. Carrowkeel is one of the “big four” passage tomb cemeteries in Ireland (the other three are Brú na Bóinne, Lough Crew and Carrowmore). Carrowkeel located at an elevation above the Lough Arrow, and the graves seem to be focused on the area Cuil wandering, Knocknarea and Carrowmore. There are fourteen passage tombs at Carrowkeel. Some can be entered by crawling through a narrow passage.Twelve more passage graves are nearby, most of which are included in the Keshcorran complex. [1] A special type of crude pottery found in passage graves are entitled Carrowkeel Ware, after having noted in Carrowkeel monument.
Lough Arrow and just north of Carrowkeel is another, seemingly related, giant passage grave, Heapstown Cairn. This is part of the legendary Moytura, the site of battles between the Tuatha Dé Danann, the ancient gods in Ireland, and the demonic Fomorians.
The mountain range contains Carrowkeel called the Bricklieve mountains, that is, the speckled mountains in Ireland, a possible reference to its appearance when more quartz stone survived on the outside of Cairns, making them glisten in the sun. The tombs were opened by RAS Macalister in 1911, together with Robert Lloyd Praeger and Edmund Clarence Richard Armstrong. Even Macalister was familiar with contemporary archaeological methods, he acted hastily on Carrowkeel and his removal and disturbance of the chamber floor has hampered investigators who followed him. In “The way I went,” in 1937, Praeger gives an eerie account of the first entry in one of the Carrowkeel monument.
“I lit three candles and stood for a moment, to let my eyes get accustomed to the dim light. That’s all, just like the last Bronze Age man (sic) had left it, three to four thousand years earlier. A light brownish dust covered all … the beads of stone, bone implements made from Red Deer Horn, and many fragments of pottery much decayed. on small raised indentations in the wall was flat stones, which rested the calcined bones of small children. ”
A 2004 excavation of Professor Stefan Bergh, NUIG of hut sites on the slopes of Mullaghafarna – near the Cairn O and P, Carrowkeel – promises to illuminate the builders of these monuments. Visitors to the site are asked not to climb on the cairn, or damage monuments in any way, and do not take anything in or out of these ancient tombs. Some parts of the website contain deep cracks, holes and rocks.
1911 Excavation
Monuments on Carrowkeel originally excavated by a team of scientists in 1911. [2] These excavations led to a series of conclusions, including animal bones, cremated human remains, human bones and tools and pottery from both the Neolithic Age when the monument is thought to have originally designed and Bronze Age, which began c2,000 years after that.
The original excavation suffer any unscientific uncharacteristically documentation that later led to many of the artifacts found at the site is lost.It is also incorrectly dated monument bronze age structures, which later proved to be inaccurate after further research in the 20th century.
References
- Jump up ^ Hensey, Robert, Mr Meehan, Marion Dowd, and Sam Moore.”A century of archeology historic excavations and modern research at Carrowkeel Passage Tombs, County Sligo.” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature 114 (2014): 1-31.
- Jump up ^ Hensey, Robert, Mr Meehan, Marion Dowd, and Sam Moore.”A century of archeology historic excavations and modern research at Carrowkeel Passage Tombs, County Sligo.” Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. Section C: Archaeology, Celtic Studies, History, Linguistics, Literature 114 (2014): 1-31.