Irish Neolithic Research Articles

Sex bias in Neolithic megalithic burials

AbstractObjectivesA statistical study comparing osteological and ancient DNA determinations of sex was conducted in order to investigate whether there are sex biases in United Kingdom and Irish Neolithic megalithic burials.Materials and MethodsGenetic and osteological information from human individuals from 32 megalithic sites in the UK and Ireland dating from 4000 to 2500 cal. BCE was collected and statistically analyzed to test whether there is a true over‐representation of males at these sites. The published dataset from the study by Sánchez‐Quinto et al. in 2019 was initially analyzed before being refined and included in a larger dataset. Osteological analysis of sex bias was limited to adults with available sex estimations, and genetic analysis limited to published dataResultsTwo sites consistently returned significant p‐values suggesting a potential over‐representation in osteological males at one site (Knowe of Midhowe, Orkney) and genetic males in the other (Primrose Grange, Ireland). Cumulative statistical analyses point towards a male bias in the representation of sexes in Neolithic megalithic burials, but these results do not reflect the site‐by‐site and regional variation found in this study.DiscussionThe interpretation of sex bias, that is, the over‐representation of one sex over another ‐ depends on other socio‐cultural variables (e.g., kinship) and the emphasis placed on statistical significance. The trend towards males being over‐represented in Neolithic megalithic burials is not as clear as previously thought, and requires further testing and data collection to uncover.

Making a Mark: Process, Pattern and Change in the British and Irish Neolithic

This paper presents key results of theMaking a Markproject (2014–2016), which aimed to provide a contextual framework for the analysis of mark making on portable artefacts in the British and Irish Neolithic by comparing them with other mark-making practices, including rock art and passage tomb art. The project used digital imaging techniques, including Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), and improved radiocarbon chronologies, to develop a new understanding of the character of mark making in the British and Irish Neolithic. Rather than considering this tradition in representational terms, as expression of human ideas, we focus on two kinds of relational material practices, the processes of marking and the production of skeuomorphs, and their emergent properties. We draw on Karen Barad's concept of ‘intra-action’ and Gilles Deleuze's notion of differentiation to understand the evolution and development of mark-making traditions and how they relate to other kinds of social practices over the course of the Neolithic.

Neolithic land-use dynamics in northwest Ireland: multi-proxy evidence from Lough Arrow, County Sligo

A high-resolution multi-proxy study of lake sediments from Loughbrick Bay in Lough Arrow, County Sligo, Ireland provides a detailed record of Neolithic vegetation history and land-use change. The high concentration of megalithic monuments around Lough Arrow suggests that the region was a centre of settlement and ritual activity during the Irish Neolithic. The pollen record indicates that human activities, including farming, intensified ca. 100 years after the mid-Holocene elm decline, which is dated to 3820 bc. Pastoral and arable farming formed part of the Neolithic subsistence economy, in particular during the first half of the Neolithic. Although levels of human impact were low during most of the later Neolithic, allowing woodland recovery, short periods of arable farming recurred during that time. Human pressure on the landscape increased again at the end of the Neolithic and during the Chalcolithic period. Interruption of farming and settlement activities often coincided with wetter climate. Comparison of this study with records from nearby lakes shows that the type of farming varied at a local scale. While pastoral farming was widespread, cereal cultivation was spatially and temporally restricted. The pollen evidence suggests that wheat was the predominant crop during the earlier Neolithic, whereas barley became more important during the later Neolithic.

Long-term human impact and environmental change in mid-western Ireland, with particular reference to Céide Fields – an overview

Abstract. This paper presents new palaeoecological data from north County Mayo (Co. Mayo), western Ireland, and reviews published data with a view to achieving a better understanding of the timing and nature of early farming in the region, its impact on the natural environment, and the factors, including climate change, that influenced mid- and late-Holocene vegetation dynamics and farming in the region. A long pollen profile from Glenulra, a deep basin situated within Céide Fields, and short profiles from blanket peat that overlies the prehistoric stone-wall field system provide unambiguous evidence for substantial farming, including widespread woodland clearance, in the early British and Irish Neolithic (beginning ca. 3800 BCE). This was followed by a distinct lull that lasted several centuries until farming activity resumed again, at first modestly (at ca. 2700 BCE) and then more markedly from 2350 BCE, i.e. at the Neolithic–Chalcolithic transition. It is argued on the basis of this and other palaeoecological evidence, including pollen analytical investigations at nearby Garrynagran, that, contrary to recent suggestions, there is no reason to doubt the widely held view that the stone-wall field system – unique in a western European Neolithic context – is correctly ascribable to the earlier part of the British and Irish Neolithic. The history of pine growing in bog contexts (mainly blanket bog) in the region is considered in the light of 14C dates derived from pine timbers, and the results of dendrochronological investigations at Garrynagran that have enabled two floating pine chronologies to be constructed, are presented. The climatic implications of these data are discussed within local and wider regional contexts.

Rites of Passage: Mortuary Practice, Population Dynamics, and Chronology at the Carrowkeel Passage Tomb Complex, Co. Sligo, Ireland

The first detailed investigation of the human remains from the Carrowkeel passage tomb complex since their excavation in 1911 has revealed several new and important insights about life, death, and mortuary practice in Neolithic Ireland. Osteological analysis provides the first conclusive proof for the occurrence of dismemberment of the dead at Irish passage tombs, practised contemporarily with cremation as one of a suite of funerary treatments. The research also highlights changes in burial tradition at the complex over the course of the Neolithic. Providing a chronology for these changes allows them to be linked to wider trends in monument construction, which may relate to changes in both land use and climate during the period. Multi-isotope analysis hints at the presence of non-local individuals among the interred and the possible existence of different food sourcing areas at the onset of the later Neolithic period. Preliminary results from ancient DNA sequencing of six individuals from Carrowkeel provide evidence for the genetic ancestry of Irish Neolithic populations, demonstrating their Anatolian origins and links along the Atlantic façade.

Eric Voegelin as a Teacher's Teacher

ABSTRACTEric Voegelin was never interested in forming a school—his quest for truth was so Socratic that the last thing he wanted was people simply commenting on his own work. At the same time, his approach to the key texts of Western experience—and in his later years, of Eastern and archaic Neolithic and Paleolithic—blazed the way for his readers to get out there into that wide field of the human quest for transcendence and expand on his work in their own way. What this essay attempts, however sketchily, is to record his impact on my own teaching, with five samples of Voegelin-inspired courses I've developed. I begin with headlines from a philosophical effort at articulating an Irish Neolithic experience at Newgrange (3200 BC)—elsewhere, and following Voegelin, I've pushed that work back through Lascaux to Chauvet (32,000 BC). Then a brief mention of a Voegelinian reading of the beautiful Hindu Bhagavad Gita, followed by interpretations of Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, and finally, a critique of Richard Dawkins' God Delusion. While, over the years, my classes also expanded on The World of the Polis and Plato and Aristotle, what Voegelin always seemed to demand was for us to engage in what he calls ‘the quest of the quest,' rather than simply repeat him. That's why I see him as the teacher's teacher: he wanted you, as a philosophy lecturer, to get on with your own search, and to awaken in your students what he called ‘the Question as a constant structure in the experience of reality.’

Response of chironomids to Neolithic land-use change in north-west Ireland

This study provides the first decadally resolved chironomid and organic geochemistry record of the Irish Neolithic from a small lake adjacent to the Carrowkeel-Keshcorran complex in County Sligo, Ireland. Chironomid (non-biting midge fly) sub-fossils and lake sediment geochemistry (δ13C, δ15N and C:N) from the Templevanny Lough core were used to assess the timing and magnitude of within-lake responses to Neolithic farming activity. When compared with decadally resolved pollen and macroscopic charcoal records from the same core, the limnological data show a direct influence of prehistoric farming on a freshwater lake system through nutrient loading and lake eutrophication. Elevated nutrient levels, suggesting a more productive lake system, and a subsequent turnover in the chironomid community indicate a period of intensive farming activity from c. 3790–3620 BC in the early Neolithic. This was followed by a decline in farming with short periods of small-scale human activity, exemplified through nutrient loading and short-lived increases in eutrophic chironomid taxa during the middle to late Neolithic. A return of farming activity can be seen in all proxy data in the late Neolithic ( c. 2720–2480 BC). The chironomid community composition typically lagged land-use change by c. 10–20 years and exhibited predictable and proportional responses to agricultural activity. The timing and magnitude of limnological changes show that land-use, rather than climate, is the main control on chironomids at Templevanny Lough, thus showing the potential prominence of the anthropogenic signal during the Neolithic.

Milking the megafauna: Using organic residue analysis to understand early farming practice

In Europe, the shift to agriculture starts around cal 7000 BC, spreading across the continent over several thousand years. The island of Ireland lies geographically and chronologically at the end of this trajectory, in the centuries around cal 4000 BC. Molecular and stable carbon isotope analyses undertaken of ca. 450 pottery vessels from a range of Irish Neolithic sites firmly establishes that dairying is one of the very earliest farming practices in evidence in Ireland, successfully introduced into an island environment that had not supported large mammals for at least the preceding 9000 years – a significant logistical feat.

The molecules of meals: new insight into Neolithic foodways

The molecules of meals: new insight into Neolithic foodways

The molecules of meals: new insight into Neolithic foodways

Details of daily life such as food and drink can be difficult to capture in prehistory, especially on an island with a temperate climate and covered mainly by acidic soils: plant remains will only survive through charring or water-logging, whilst animal bone frequently dissolves unless calcined. At the molecular level, however, a host of biochemical and isotopic signatures exist indicating what our prehistoric antecedents ate and drank. The most robust of these biomarkers are lipids, commonly found absorbed into the clay matrix of pottery vessels—the residues of meals sometimes many thousands of years old. The wet, acidic conditions that accelerate the decay of so much prehistoric organic matter fortunately preserve these lipid residues exceedingly well. This paper details the results of a recent programme of molecular and compound-specific stable isotope analysis on lipids from nearly 500 Irish Neolithic vessels, providing unparalleled insights into the diet, and food procurement and processing activities of our earliest farming communities.

Preface

Preface Food and Drink is the second thematic volume to be published since the decision of the editorial board of Proceedings in 2007 to bring out an occasional thematic volume addressing a fundamental theme in Irish life. Like its predecessor, Domestic Life in Ireland (Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, 111C), which was published in 2011, the current volume favours the multidisciplinary approach that is one of the defining features of the journal. It aspires thereby to provide a forum for new ideas and for syntheses of established approaches and findings. In keeping with the remit and tradition of the journal to explore the Irish past in la longue durée, it addresses food and drink between the Mesolithic and the present. As Stephen Mennell’s ‘introduction’ to this collection points out, despite the long tradition of collecting and assembling recipes and the cultural potential of printed cookery books, awareness of the rich and revealing potential of the history of food and drink is a comparatively recent development. The decision of Louis Cullen in 1981 to devote two chapters in his vastly influential exploration of the emergence of modern Ireland to ‘diet in a changing society’ and ‘hospitality and men’ was crucial in this respect, because it brought food and diet into the Irish historical mainstream.1 It did not, to be sure, herald a flood of publications on these or allied subjects. The history of alcohol consumption, for example, remained anchored in a world that answered more visibly to the politics of social control than to the new perspectives presented by sociability, conviviality of sociability.2 However, it did pave the way over time for more ambitious work, since as well as Regina Sexton’s helpful short survey, which appeared in 1998,3 the publication by Oxford University Press in 2001 of Feast and famine: a history of food in Ireland, 15001920 by Leslie Clarkson and E. Margaret Crawford can justifiably be identified as a milestone, less for the novelty of its findings, than for the breadth of its conclusions, its temporal range and the eclectic range of sources upon which it draws.4 It certainly highlighted the riches to be gleaned from parliamentary enquiries and official surveys, which Ian Miller has * doi: 10.3318/PRIAC.2015.15 1 L. M. Cullen, The emergence of modern Ireland, 16001900 (London, 1981). 2 Colm Kerrigan, Father Matthew and the Irish Temperance Movement (Cork, 1992); Paul A. Townsend, Father Matthew, Temperance and Irish identity (Dublin, 2002); Diarmaid Ferriter, A nation of extremes: the Pioneers in twentieth-century Ireland (Dublin, 1999). 3 Regina Sexton, A little history of Irish food (Dublin, 1998). 4 Leslie Clarkson and E. Margaret Crawford, Feast and famine: a history of food in Ireland, 15001920 (Oxford, 2001). Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Vol. 115C, viix # 2015 Royal Irish Academy demonstrated still more authoritatively and in greater detail in his recent pioneering engagement with the way in which science, medicine and social reform intersected to shape attitudes to food and diet in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.5 This is a most important development because for all their intrinsic interest as subjects in their own right, food and drink are still more revealing archaeologically and historically of the societies, peoples and eras in which they are located when they are appealed to amplify and to illuminate broader societal behaviours and tendencies. This is something that Irish archaeology does particularly well. The archaeological essays in this volume introduce several new themes around food-related behaviour and culinary material culture, supported by innovative theoretical frameworks and breakthroughs in scientific methodologies. Complexity has been recognised as a feature of Mesolithic diets and foodways, with belief exercising an influence on food consumption and identified in the archaeological record as specific rituals and patterns of discard. The potential of stable isotope analysis on lipid residues has been realised in its initial application to Irish Neolithic ceramic vessels. This method has revealed that vessels were used mainly to process dairy fats and other foodstuffs, thereby providing new insights into diet and food procurement among the earliest farming communities on the island and marking a beginning to the research journey...

Editorial: ‘Gods make their own importance’

Editorial ‘Gods make their own importance’ The centenary of the commencement of the First World War (28 July 2014) has been marked in different ways. This editorial recalls the small group of dedicated scholars who sustained the Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Section C during the period of the war. The tenacity of Irish scholarship in archaeology, Celtic studies and history is well represented in the contents pages of Section C published between 1914 and 1919.1 Although 210,000 Irishmen, nationalist and unionist, fought in the war, and the island was ‘decisively affected’ by it,2 there was nothing allusive to it in the articles published in the Proceedings during those tumultuous years. The noise of war, outside of Ireland, had no adverse impact on the antiquarian activities of the Academy’s scholars who continued to devote their time to lending importance to the local and familiar, if more remote, Irish past. Those who maintained the journal during the Great War were a small and dedicated group, some of whom were involved in Irish political movements. E.C.R. Armstrong, the brothers H.C. and Rev. H.J. Lawlor, R.A.S. Macalister and T.J. Westropp formed the backbone of contributions in that period. Between them they published 35 papers in just three volumes (3234) of Section C. Of the stalwarts of Section C during the war, E.C.R. Armstrong was very productive, publishing five articles between 1914 and 1919. He was keeper of Irish antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland when his comprehensive Guide to the collection of Irish antiquities: catalogue of Irish gold ornaments in the collection of the Royal Irish Academy, was published in 1920.3 The catalogue described and illustrated 475 gold items which were then housed in the museum. His output for Section C from 1914 to 1919 included papers on ‘Four brooches preserved in the Library of Trinity College Dublin’ (vol. 32), ‘On some * doi: 10.3318/PRIAC.2014.114.12 1 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 32C (191416), 33C (191617) and 34C (191719). 2 John Horne, ‘The war on our history is over: we played a big part in WW1’, Irish Independent (17 May 2014), available at http://www.independent.ie/life/world-war-1/thewar -on-our-history-is-over-we-played-a-big-part-in-ww1-30270461.html (last accessed 12 September 2014). 3 Mary Cahill, ‘Bronze Age gold at the National Museum’, Irish Arts Review Yearbook 9 (1993), 14952. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy Vol. 114C, viix # 2014 Royal Irish Academy associated finds of Bronze celts in Ireland’ (vol. 33), ‘Associated finds of Irish Neolithic celts’ (vol. 34), and he collaborated with George Coffey in writing an account of the Annesborough hoard (vol. 32). Coffey,4 who died in August 1916, had been politically active during his life. He was a campaigner for Home Rule and Free Trade during the 1880s and secretary to the Irish National League. Elected a member of the Academy in 1886, a decade later he was appointed to the National Museum of Ireland eventually becoming keeper of Irish antiquities. His fieldwork included investigations at the caves of Kesh, Co. Sligo, the Topped Mountain cairn in Co. Fermanagh and the tumulus at Craigywarren, Co. Galway. His major publication before his death was The Bronze Age in Ireland published in 1913. His final contribution to Section C, coauthored with Armstrong, was on the subject of a ‘Find of bronze objects at Annesborough, Co. Armagh’, published in vol. 32 (191416). Armstrong also collaborated with Rev. Hugh Jackson Lawlor,5 professor of ecclesiastical history at Trinity College Dublin and dean (192433) of St Patrick’s Cathedral, on the shrine known as the ‘The Domnach Airgid’ which appeared in vol. 34 (191719). Jackson, who was secretary of the Academy (191930), produced many notable works during his academic career. In the first year of the Great War, his Psalter and martyrology of Ricemarsh was published, and a substantial article on ‘The Cathach of St Columba’ appeared in vol. 33 of Section C for 191617. Hugh’s brother, the Ulster businessman Henry Cairnes Lawlor...

Solar influence on climate variability and human development during the Neolithic: evidence from a high-resolution multi-proxy record from Templevanny Lough, County Sligo, Ireland

The relationship between climatic variations, vegetation dynamics and early human activity between c. 4150–2860 BC was reconstructed from a high-resolution pollen and geochemical record obtained from a small lake located in County Sligo, Ireland. The proxy record suggests the existence of a woodland with a largely closed canopy at the start of the fourth millennium BC. Only minor human disturbance is recorded. Following an episode of increased rainfall at c. 3990 BC, a decrease in the elm population occurred between c. 3970 and 3820 BC. This coincided with a period of warming and drying climatic conditions and an initial increase in anthropogenic activities. A second episode of high precipitation between c. 3830–3800 BC was followed by a steep increase in human impact on the landscape, which became most pronounced between c. 3740 and 3630 BC. At this time, the lake level of Templevanny Lough was at its lowest during the Neolithic.The onset of wetter and cooler conditions after c. 3670 BC, representing the transition from the Early to the Middle Neolithic, coincided with a period of woodland recovery. The Middle Neolithic was characterised by pronounced climatic oscillations including periods of substantial rainfall between c. 3600 and 3500 BC and between c. 3500 and 3460 BC. A nearly century-long climatic amelioration between c. 3460–3370 BC facilitated a revival of human activity on a small scale around the lake. Abandonment of the area and full woodland recovery occurred after a period of particularly wet and cool conditions ranging from c. 3360–3290 BC. The pollen and geochemistry data suggest that the Late Neolithic was marked by a period of ameliorated conditions between c. 3110–3050 BC that was followed by two episodes of high rainfall at c. 3060–3030 BC and c. 2940–2900 BC.The timing of the climatic shifts inferred from the Templevanny Lough record is in agreement with those of moisture/precipitation and temperature reconstructions from northern and western Europe and the Alps, suggesting that the studied period was characterised by a high-frequency climate variability. The results of the present study imply that human development during the Irish Neolithic was influenced by climatic variations. These climatic shifts correspond to variations in solar activity, suggesting a solar forcing on climate.

Settling Down or Moving On?: The Settlement of the Irish Neolithic Landscape

The Irish Neolithic spanned some 1,600 years from approximately 4,000 to 2,400 bc. At the beginning of this period, Ireland was a frontier land at the remote edge of Europe. The first farmers arriving from Britain or the continent found a heavily forested land teeming with wildlife, which was already home to scattered groups of hunter-gatherers who had coexisted with this world for centuries. As these farmers set about clearing the woodland to lay out their farms and construct the first robust rectangular (and, later, circular) houses, they would give rise to a society which in time would build a range of megalithic tombs, various earthen monuments such as henges and mounds, great ritual complexes spread over many acres like Bru na Boinne in County Meath, large ordered settlements, and massive fieldwall systems. The history of excavating Neolithic settlements dates back to the 1890s, when such pioneers as William J. Knowles began uncovering prehistoric coastal settlements. Over the following decades, the number of known sites slowly increased until Sean P. O Riordain’s landmark 1954 publication of the major Lough Gur settlement in County Limerick. During the remainder of the century, trained researchers excavated a small but steady number of house sites. The affluence of the 1990s triggered a surge in the number of sites excavated; this ended with the financial crisis of 2008. Nonetheless, the archaeological literature now includes hundreds of published house excavations. And yet, the Neolithic, one of the most researched periods in ancient Irish history, remains the subject of ongoing debate in Irish archaeology. The debate stems from many causes: the sheer wealth of sites; the realization that the Irish Neolithic differed radically from the Neolithic experience in neighboring Britain; and a changing emphasis in the research. Empirical data-driven analysis of sites has been succeeded by a greater desire to understand how people of the time actually lived and interacted with their world. A key issue in the debates—

The house and group identity in the Irish Neolithic

A connection is frequently made between the arrival of farming in Ireland and the beginnings of domestic life ' proper', i.e., the foundation of a permanent or semipermanent base around which activities and events relating to the agricultural year are focused. The appearance in the archaeological record of substantial timber buildings associated with early Neolithic ceramics, lithics and food waste would on first inspection seem to bear this out. Emerging detail on their construction, use and abandonment suggests that they represented a considerable social investment for at least several generations during the early Neolithic. The domestic architecture that characterises later periods— the middle and late Neolithic—leaves very different and generally more ephemeral traces in the archaeological record as well as diverging quite dramatically in terms of shape and design. Perhaps most significantly, these later shifts appear to coincide with changes in the form and scale of funerary and ceremonial architecture such as passage tombs and timber circles. In this paper, it is argued that exploring the space, content and design of these various domestic settings through the Neolithic can bring us closer to understanding earlier prehistoric society as a whole.

The house and group identity in the Irish Neolithic

The house and group identity in the Irish Neolithic

The house and group identity in the Irish Neolithic

The house and group identity in the Irish Neolithic

Tool hoards and Neolithic use of the landscape in north‐eastern Ireland

Summary. Archaeologists frequently suggest that the Neolithic occupants of Ireland and Britain may not have been fully settled farmers, but were, instead, at least partially nomadic pastoralists. However, human use of any landscape is more complex than the current debate suggests, and this debate has included few systematic studies designed to evaluate this issue in detail. This paper examines hoards (or ‘caches’) of flaked stone tools in County Antrim, Ireland, to consider the links between anticipatory tool storage and human land‐use patterns. Our data imply regular human movements over the study area, possibly linked to transhumant use of different altitudinal zones, with functionally and, sometimes, technologically specific classes of tools stored in different areas. However, the larger context of data on the Irish Neolithic clearly indicates that these movements were part of a way of life centred on permanent horticultural homesteads.

The Public Forum and the Space Between: the Materiality of Social Strategy in the Irish Neolithic

Framed within an interpretive, humanistic ‘archaeology of inhabitance’, the study explores the means by which a social, intellectual order particular to time and place is embedded within the material universe. Through the mediation of the human body, natural and architectural space is considered to be a medium for the production and reproduction of social relations. The specific materiality of places inhabited in the past is explored in detail, focusing on possibilities for and constraints upon the body and the senses.The phenomenon of monumentality at the Loughcrew passage tomb cemetery in east-central Ireland is considered in the context of changing narratives of place and biographies of person and landscape. In contrast to many previous studies, the focus is upon engagement with the exterior spaces of the complex: the more frequent and larger-scale involvement of the communal body in these ‘public’ spaces will have played a critical role in the validation of knowledges and claims to authority which a more restricted group will have articulated within the confines of tomb chambers and passages.The earlier tombs draw out qualities latent within the landscape, placing particular emphasis on prior, natural boundaries. Through time, the regionalisation of the Loughcrew hills acquires increasing architectural definition, by means of which a series of interconnecting spaces emerge at a much more human scale. The latest architectural and spatial developments may well form part of material strategies through which were engendered particular structures of authority carrying the potential for substantially heightened individual prominence within increasingly exclusive kinship solidarities. Ultimately, mediation between the physical and metaphysical elements of existence may be controlled with reference to distinct lines of descent rather than to a more generalised ancestral community. At the same time, the range of hills is gradually transformed from a meaningful locus which conceals within it the human efforts of monumental construction, to a landscape that derives its significance from massive summit cairns visible from considerable distances. This appropriative transformation may be seen as a material strategy which moves communities' conceptions of existence from an integrated, cultural whole in which people and landscape are embedded in each other, towards a vision of individuals and places as increasingly separate and self-contained.

Newgrange — Science or Symbolizm

The Newgrange passage tomb is examined for evidence of ‘Neolithic science’. Claims that it incorporated an astronomical alignment, and was constructed using Pythagorean geometry and the megalithic yard are reviewed as are scientific interpretations of its art. A new analysis of the tomb's structure reveals that it was based on a simple geometric shape measurable by a 13.1 m unit of length. The locations of particular motifs and decorated surfaces are shown to conform to the spatial relationships evident in the tomb's form. These are defined in terms of oppositions between left and right, front and back, inside and outside, visible and hidden, as well as making reference to symbols found in the art of the neighbouring passage tomb at Knowth.These features are interpreted, not as evidence of a specificically scientific discourse in the Irish Neolithic, but as the elaboration of elements common to the passage tomb ritual discourse. Competition for political control, in the context of mortuary practices, resulted in the increasing formalization and rigid interpretation of passage tomb symbolizm, and the ritualization of new areas of knowledge.