Poulawack Cairn(s) View all content for Poulawack

Excavated June/July 1934, cairn completely removed and "re-erected as nearly as possible in its former shape." There were 10 graves/cists found, containing the remains of 16 people. Remains of 2 other people were found in the cairn itself, not in the graves/cists. The excavators found it impossible to accurately date the cairn "except to say that it belongs to the Bronze Age." This is worth quoting extensively: "The most remarkable feature of the cairn is the fact that the ten graves contained the remains of no less than sixteen people, exclusive of course of the small traces of two others not actually in the graves. Especially noteworthy is the obvious planning of the entire mound around a central pair of graves which appear to have contained three generations of a family whose bones were probably brought from elsewhere to form the nucleus of the whole mound. It may not be too imaginative to see in this special regard for the remains of the dead, and in the accumulation of burials around the central ones some survival of the megalithic tradition which was so strongly rooted in County Clare." taken from: A cairn at Poulawack, County Clare By H O'Neill Hencken, M.A., Ph.D., F.S.A. Journal R. Soc. Antiquaries Ireland, Series 7 Vol V.

Posted by ryaner 14th March 2007ce

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