What is recorded here

Knocknarea hides twenty-six small caves, but Cave C holds the oldest human trace because a fractured skull bone dated to 4740 before present lay eight metres inside its narrow crossing. That much is known; what is missing is the reason the cave received it. Perhaps a Neolithic family used the shallow chamber as a death place, setting a lost person beneath the mountain instead of burying them in open fields. The cave does not need to be grand when it has kept a person since before empires had names.

This cave (Cave C) is one of 26 small, inconspicuous caves on the steep NW and N slopes of Knocknarea Mountain. It comprises a long, narrow cruciform passage (L 14.5m; Wth 1m; H 1.2m). In 2002 Stefan Bergh discovered a fragment of the occipital bone from the skull of an adult human in the cave. The bone was lying on the cave floor, approximately 8m from the entrance. It returned a radiocarbon date of 4740± 50BP, placing it in the Neolithic period (Dowd 2008). Human remains of Neolithic date have also been recovered from Cave K (SL014-288----) which is located c. 50m to NW (Dowd and Kahlert 2014). Compiled by: Jane O'Shaughnessy Date of upload: 10 September 2014

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