County: Meath Site name: NEWGRANGE td
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: Professor M.J. O’Kelly, Department of Archaeology/U.C.C.
Site type: Megalithic tomb - passage tomb
Period/Dating: Neolithic (4000BC-2501 BC)
ITM: E 700629m, N 772718m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.694465, -6.476260
This season, work was concentrated on the area east of the entrance to the tomb, which area was first investigated in 1969.
Below the Beaker horizon discovered in 1969 an extensive scatter of large pits was found, which measured up to a metre or more in diameter and 1.50m. in depth. The fillings of these pits frequently contained animal bones, charcoal, and potsherds, all of which seem to have been thrown in as rubbish. The pottery was comparable to the Neolithic wares already found on the site and one as identifiable as Beaker; furthermore, one pit was overlain by a rectangular beaker hearth; thus a pre-beaker date seems probable. No conclusive evidence was found as to the original purpose of the pits, but they are possibly best explained as grain bins.
Excavation at the north side of the mound discovered three courses of the high revetment wall still in position on top of kerb stones 48, 49 and 50. The wall consisted of large water-rolled boulders. A cutting into the mound at this point showed that the layer of turves first found in 1965, under the cairn, continued inwards; at the innermost point of the cutting, twenty-five layers could be observed, compressed to a thickness of 1.00m. The turves had been waterlogged quite quickly, which resulted in the excellent preservation of botanical and zoological remains. Samples of these have been sent to the Instituut voor Prae – en Protohistorie in the University of Amsterdam, where work has already shown the presence of Triticum pollen (Wheat) in the layer of turves.
The same cutting showed at least three horizons in the cairn formed of thin layers of soil full of snail shells. It is thought that these represent stadia in the building of the cairn, during which vegetation grew up and small snails flourished, only to be killed off by the next addition of mound material.
It had been thought that the elaborately decorated kerb-stone K52, diametrically opposite the entrance stone, might mark the site of a second entrance analogous to that one at Knowth. No such entrance was discovered, but this cutting did show the exact original positions of the kerbstones here, which prove that the ‘heart-shaped’ plan of the mound was intentional.
The zoological material from the site has been sent to the Instituut in Amsterdam, where Mrs. van Wijngaarden-Bakker has received a 3-year research grant to study all the Newgrange bone finds. Three charcoal samples from the Beaker settlement have been sent to the Groningen Laboratory for C14 dating.
