This has become an interesting and refreshing discussion. I like Rockhopper's anarchic and challenging approach. I have often wanted to ask such questions here but fear of looking uninformed and 'ignorant' stopped me. Your answer is helpful as always Tiompan - as ever with prehistory, more questions than answers. Am I right in remembering that you had said almost all of the the dolmens (portal tombs) are on the east/south-east coast of Ireland and west coasts of southern England and Wales - which seems to indicate it was a nation of sea going peoples who built them. I wonder if Rockhopper could say how far west in Ireland portal tombs are found (I know there is one in the Midlands at Aughnacliffe in Longford, where my mother came from).

I have the opportunity to spend some time in West Cork in May and will be looking at stone circles - was hoping there may be some portal tombs too. I'll be travelling from Fishguard so plan to see Carreg Samson on the way back.

All the best
J

There is also the point of the aesthetic form and sheer substantial nature of many surviving capstones. I'm no structural engineer, but I've often been struck by just how impressive they are in relation to a role of merely roofing over a chamber, suggesting that surely there must have been some requirement towards display. Why go to all that trouble then pile rock or earth over the top? I understand this is looking at it from a 21st century viewpoint, and the fact that the gods would know it was impressive regardless might have been enough, but I would have thought human vanity - ours is better than theirs - would have played a part.

Agree with the source of stone point.... clearly Iron Age culture generally respected/feared cairns as representing a bygone source of 'power' or else so many round cairns and long/round barrows would not have been retained, and still survive, within hillforts. However once that reverence had gone, great source of building stone! And the nearer a site was to later habitation, the more chance of complete removal.

The thing that bugs me, however, is the hollowing out of upland cairns where it would have been just as easy - if not easier - to collect surface rock straight from the ground lower down the hill/mountain. A good example of this is at the Carnau'r Garreg Las I visited a couple of weeks back. Rock litters the mountainside, yet both cairns are substantially defaced internally. The 'storm shelter' theory is also tenuous here since the cairns lie well off the main east/west path traversing Y Mynydd Du, with some (albeit isolated) farms less than an easy hours descent to the NW? Such mutilation would have required a great deal of effort.... for what? Treasure hunting/unrecorded excavation would appear the most logical explanation.... people will be willing to go to lengths if there is the chance of substantial reward. Or could some ritualistic requirement have provided the necessary motive for destruction... sort of akin to incomers to an area saying 'your justification for ownership is your ancestors reside upon the hill.... well, they don't any more since we've got rid of them... we're in charge now'.