Re: Deafening silence | Forum — The Modern Antiquarian

Carrowmore Complex 7

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Deafening silence

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follow that cow Dec 22, 2004 00:37:11

Replying to FourWinds

Thanks for the info.
It seems, that like me, everyone who visits Carrowmore is quite literally blown away.
We visited on an afternoon in late July 04, having spent the morning at Carrowkeel(which is an amazing experience in its own right).
We were lucky enough to get a guided tour of the site by one of the onsite archeologists - as we ran to join up with the small tour group I looked to my left - ----what the f*** is that JCB doing on top of that cairn? - reverse archeology it seems - they are rebuilding the main cairn from the local dry stane dykes that were built from stone stolen from the original structure - "Is this quite cosher archeology", I asked our guide. "Oh, yeh. These stones have moved all over these fields during the last eight thousand years or so. So, bearing that in mind, we're just continuing the tradition."
I wish I had taken notes, as the whole experience of our visit was quite overwhelming and with the presence of farms(old and new), wandering livestock, houses being built, lack of signage/information and JCB's on chambered cairns, perhaps even verged on the absurd.
Particular information that has stuck with me is that,
it is reckoned that the megalith builders would only have needed to do a 20-25 hour week to survive due to the richness of Sligo (seashell) Bay. Rest of time was devoted to...well....doing other things... such as messing about with vast quantities of stone.
In The Megalithic European pp 280-281, Julian places Knocknarea as the central point, but the on site archeologist was quite convinced that the chambered cairn
'a la JCB' was the focus for the whole of this area. He pointed out a whole array of alignments,from barely visible cairns in the distant mountains, to Maeves Tomb on Knocknarea, all seemed to be aligned with this cairn.

Lastly he pointed out that the two dolmen, that don't seem to fit into any category, may have been placed to act as kind of 'triumphal archway' welcoming visitors into the sacred ground.

Anyway, for anyone and everyone with even a passing interest in this subject Carrowmore is a MUST.

I hope to return this summer, and armed with Julian's new book and FourWinds excellent website, I hope to get a lot more from my visit.

FourWinds Dec 22, 2004 08:06:24

Replying to follow that cow

The JCB is an issue of great controversy. The last three times I have visited Carrowmore Listoghil has looked completely different.

Although Listoghil forms a focus for many of the monuments it is undoubtedly Knocknarea that drew the ancients to the area. Listoghil is a very young monument (perhaps built around 2000bce) and of a very different style to the others. It was built over a much more interesting monument. Underneath it they found a bed of imported clay with evidence of burning on it. This was presumably the funeral pyre location and would have formed an important centre. I think it's quite natural that a lot of the tombs should face the place where all the ancestors were cremated.

It is easy to assess if the nearby monuments point at the location of Listoghil, especially those between it and Knocknarea, but the more distant monuments point at Carrowmore as a whole and Knocknarea. They are too far away to say that they align directly with Listoghil alone.

I disagree with the 'gateway' theory, too. From the remains today it does stand up, but it has to be remembered that there were once over 200 tombs at Carrowmore, not the (rather large) handful that can be seen today. Even now you pass 4 monuments along the road before reaching the supposed 'gateway' tombs.

Ah, the Xmas break approaches. I'll be back up there soon :-) and will be visiting some of the monuments around the area and assessing the alignments from them for myself.

One small comment about the difference between Julian's (and my) centre of Knocknarea vs the archaeos centre of Listoghil. The first archaeos to investigate the area properly were monument-centric: they were bound to decide that a monument was the centre. They feel the rich shellfish pickings of the area drew them there (and this would have had a lot to do with it), but there were other places down the coast that fit that bill. Knocknarea was (most probably) the thing that made them chose that place above the rest.