1975:052 - NEWGRANGE, Meath

In the W part of the site a number of problems remained (from 1974) to be investigated. A series of great postholes had been detected in 1974. These ran outward from the kerb of the cairn and had in part been cut through the post-cairn Beaker-period horizon. It was shown that they belonged to a building which had been destroyed by fire in a great conflagration- the burning having been so intense that the surrounding soil had been oxidised to a bright red colour over a considerable area and to a great depth. The full story of this area could not be followed up without a major extension of the excavated area and as this would have meant at least two further seasons for excavation, the decision was taken to record fully what had been found in 1975 and leave the further pursuit of the matter to someone else who may take up the study of Newgrange at some time in the future.

As described in the report for 1974, a much destroyed satellite passage-grave had been recognised to the east of the Newgrange cairn. The destruction had been very deliberate and had been done to facilitate ploughing over the area. The orthostats of kerb, passage and chamber had been smashed with the utmost ferocity and the few stones which could not be smashed were overturned and buried in pits dug adjacent to them. Despite all this, however, it proved possible to recover the complete plan of the monument. The overall diameter was 20m and the contained V-shaped passage-grave had one side-chamber opening off to the E. at the point of junction of the passage with the chamber area proper. A sill-stone had marked this point clearly. The main chamber had contained a carefully chiselled basin-stone with decorations on its edges. This had been moved out of its original position and had been damaged when the site was destroyed. Much of the original content of the tomb was recovered- burnt human bone in large quantity accompanied by “marbles” and beads of the kind well-known from passage graves. The covering mound had been built of turves, but seems to have had a capping of small water-rolled stones.

Before this satellite tomb had been built, the turf and humus had been stripped off the area. Domestic settlement on the exposed sub-soil had in time become covered by a new growth of turf and it was on this turf that Satellite Z had been built.

By way of conservation of the site, where unbroken, buried stones were found, these were re-erected into their original sockets, and all other sockets were marked with concrete slabs so that when the soil and grass are restored, the plan of the site will be clearly visible.

In earlier years of excavation in this area, a great layer of turves had been found to underly the base of the cairn and samples of this material examined in the University of Amsterdam for microscopic and macroscopic plant and other remains, had revealed much of interest in regard to environment of Newgrange before the cairn was built. Further work was done in this area in 1975 to secure another range of samples for further botanical and zoological examination. In addition, a large sample of the vegetation growing on the turves at the time they were put in was collected with a view to obtaining C14 dates. Since this material was put in place before the cairn was built, dates from it should give an approximation of the length of time taken to build the whole site since we already have a series of dates (centring on 2500 BC) for the construction of the tomb.