Beyond Newgrange: Brú na Bóinne in the later Neolithic

Stephen Davis,Knut Rassmann

doi:10.1017/ppr.2021.6

Abstract

The Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site, Ireland is best known for its megalithic monuments, in particular the great developed passage tombs of Knowth, Dowth, and Newgrange, and its abundance of megalithic art. However, our understanding of the wider Brú na Bóinne landscape has changed beyond all recognition in the last decade owing to the application of modern, non-invasive survey technologies – in particular LiDAR and large-scale geophysical survey – and most recently as a result of the hot, dry summer of 2018 which revealed a series of remarkable cropmarks between Newgrange and the River Boyne. Despite a lack of excavation it can be argued, based on their morphological characteristics, that many of the structures revealed belong within the corpus of late Neolithic ritual/ceremonial structures, including earthen henges, square-in-circle monuments, palisaded enclosures, and pit/post-alignments. These display both extraordinary diversity, yet also commonality of design and architecture, both as a group and with the passage tombs that preceded them. This paper provides an up-to-date survey of the late Neolithic and presumed late Neolithic landscape of Brú na Bóinne. It provides new evidence and new insights from ongoing survey campaigns, suggesting parallels within the British Neolithic but also insular development within some monument classes.

Highlights

The unusually dry summer of 2018 brought exceptional conditions for aerial archaeology across Britain and Ireland
The area is best known for its Neolithic passage tombs, especially the large developed tombs of Knowth, Dowth, and Newgrange, which were constructed towards the end of the 4th millennium BC, and for the remarkable corpus of megalithic
This paper demonstrates the remarkable diversity and the remarkable commonality of some of the motifs related to the probable late Neolithic monument complex within Brú na Boinne

Summary

EXCAVATION AND CHRONOLOGY

There has been little excavation of henge monuments or timber circles within Brú na Boinne in recent decades and no earthen henge monument has been excavated here since the partial excavations at Monknewtown (Sweetman 1971; 1976) Both O’Kelly et al (1983) and Sweetman et al (1985) excavated elements of the Newgrange Pit Circle, with further excavations undertaken at the possible Western Circle (Sweetman et al 1987) and the Knowth four-post structure (Eogan & Roche 1997; 1999). The class of monuments known in Ireland as ‘embanked enclosures’ are generally considered to be analogous to British henge monuments (Stout 1991; Condit & Simpson 1998; O’Sullivan et al 2012) In form these mostly comprise large (140–200 m), saucer-shaped earthen enclosures, most of which are greatly denuded with surviving banks significantly less than 1 m in height.

Pit circle avenue

Site name

CONCLUSIONS