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.