A short introduction to ‘Megalithic Ireland’

extracted from the Appletree Press title Ireland's Ancient Stones by Kenneth McNally.

In 1849 an Oxford academic named Algernon Herbert combined two Greek words, megas, meaning great, and lithos, stone, thus coining ‘megalithic’, a word which has always seemed to me imbued with potent imagery. The Irish countryside is rich in tangible reminders of a far off past that is very much part of the present, and we can learn a great deal about our distant ancestors by visiting these peaceful sites and contemplating their ancient stones.
      Megalithic tombs are broadly classified into two categories: gallery tombs, which embraces court tombs, portal tombs and wedge tombs; and passage tombs. Both types were built to accommodate multiple burials and are identified by the shape of the cairns which covered them. Gallery tombs are contained in oval or long tapered cairns, passage tombs have round cairns. In very many cases these large mounds of earth and stone have disappeared, leaving the burial chambers exposed.
      While the custom of building large and elaborate tombs declined in the Bronze Age, this period saw the appearance of another type of monument that would keep the megalithic tradition well and truly alive: the mysterious rings of standing stones that have long puzzled archaeologist and layman alike. Stone circles are not an exclusively Bronze Age monument: some may date from late Neolithic times and it is probable that a few were still being erected, or at least used, in the early Iron Age; but the majority seem to fit within a broadly 1500-year span starting around the end of the third millennium BC.
     

Extracted from the Appletree Press title Ireland's Ancient Stones - A Megalithic Heritage by Kenneth McNally, published by Appletree Press.