Poulnabrone portal tomb

There are several types of megalithic tomb in Ireland.  The most common are portal tombs, court tombs, passage tombs and wedge tombs.  Portal tombs are distinguished by their two large portal stones which stand on either side of the entrance and their massive, sloping capstones. 

 

At the centre of the Burren is one of the most famous megalithic tombs in Ireland, the Poulnabrone portal tomb.  In 1985 a worsening crack was noticed in one of the side-stones of Poulnabrone and it was decided that to preserve the monument the stone had to be replaced.  In advance of this conservation work, a team of National Monuments archaeologists under the direction of Dr. Anne Lynch excavated the tomb.  What they found were the disarticulated remains of at least twenty-one people along with various stone and bone artefacts.  These were not the remains of bodies that decomposed within the tomb, they were instead the remains of bodies that had been buried or stored elsewhere until they decomposed, and only later were they transferred to the portal tomb.  Some of the bones were scorched and burnt but this was done after the bones no longer held flesh.  The bones were placed in the chamber of the tomb in a jumbled mass and many had been jammed down into the grykes (cracks) of the bedrock floor. 

Dun Aonghasa

Prior to the Late Bronze Age, the people of the Aran Islands probably lived in what archaeologists term a 'segmentary society'.  This society would have been composed of several individual communities integrated into the larger society through kinship ties.  No group would have held sway over any other group and the settlements of the time would have been loosely clustered hamlets and scattered farmsteads.  In the Late Bronze Age, however, this segmentary society appears to have developed into a hierarchical chiefdom.  This chiefdom would have integrated the various local groups on the islands into a single, unified group under the rule of an individual leader or perhaps a council of leaders.  The central site of this chiefdom seems to have been the impressive hillfort at Dun Aonghasa on Inishmore.