Cairn

In the centre of a burial ground (SL020-166002-) which is located in the interior of the inland promontory fort (SL020-166001-). The westernmost of two cairns (see SL020-166008-) discovered and partially excavated during excavation of the Knoxspark complex in 1994 (Mount 1995d, 78-9; 2002, 103-116). A roughly circular cairn (3.2m E-W; 3m N-S; max. H 0.4m) of large stones (diam. c. 0.7m) in a brown humus matrix from which quartz flakes, animal bone and iron and iron slag were recovered. The cairn covered a possible furnace base and at least one child burial. The E and W cairns were linked by a 6m long arrangement of angular stones on the N side, possibly a wall footing, which continued to the E as a collapsed wall partly enclosing the eastern cairn. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Sligo' compiled by Ursula Egan, Elizabeth Byrne, Mary Sleeman with Sheila Ronan and Connie Murphy (Dublin Stationery Office, 2005). Date of upload: 18 January 2008 This monument is subject to a preservation order made under the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014 (PO no. 1/1995).

A Neolithic cairn, likely dating to the 4th to 3rd millennium BCE, associated with an inland promontory fort and burial ground, indicating early ritual and defensive landscape use in the region.