Megalithic tomb - wedge tomb, Carriganimmy, Co. Cork

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Megalithic Tombs

Megalithic tomb – wedge tomb, Carriganimmy, Co. Cork

Most wedge tombs, the most common megalithic tomb type in Ireland and dating broadly to the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, follow a fairly predictable logic: a tapering gallery of upright stones, wider and taller at the entrance end, covered by one or more capstones and oriented with the broader opening facing west or south-west.

The tomb on a gentle west-facing slope at the head of a small valley feeding into the Keel River in Carriganimmy, County Cork, mostly fits that description, but with one notable deviation. Its gallery is aligned roughly north-north-west to south-south-east rather than along the more typical east-west axis, an orientation that archaeologists consider atypical for the form.

The reason for this departure may lie in the ground itself. At the southern end of the roughly three-metre gallery, the builders appear to have incorporated natural outcropping rock directly into the structure, using it as the gallery sides rather than hauling and setting separate uprights. It is a pragmatic solution, and one that would naturally have dictated the alignment of the whole monument rather than the other way around. The rest of the construction follows more conventional lines: an upright slab divides the entrance at the northern end, outer walling survives along the eastern side and is doubled at the north-west, and two roofstones still cover the gallery. The tomb has partly collapsed, and a pile of field clearance material has accumulated at the northern end, the kind of slow accumulation that happens when farmers have been moving stones off neighbouring ground for generations. A second wedge tomb lies around 800 metres to the south-west, suggesting this corner of mid-Cork was a meaningful landscape to the communities who built here.

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