Mound in Dowth

Situated in a fold and in a relatively low-lying position c. 130m from a WNW-ESE section of the River Boyne to the S and c. 220m from a SSW-NNE part of the river to the E. This is a subcircular natural mound (dims c. 91m E-W; c. 82m N-S; H c. 4m at N to c. 12m at S) that has been scarped at the bottom (at S: H 1.4m) and incorporated into a field bank with mature deciduous trees W-N-E. There is also a broad scarp around the summit. Remote sensing surveys (12R0080; 14R0060) detected what proved on excavation (15E0244) at SE to be a rock-cut ditch, which surrounds the mound but is split into two at W. Other modifications of the mound included a terrace on the W side and a possible flattening of the top. The ditch produced no material apart from a silver hand-pin in the secondary ditch at W, but was undisturbed beneath layers with some medieval ceramics at W. Middle to Late Neolithic material was recovered from the SE part of the mound. The ditch and scarping of the mound probably occurred in the first millennium AD. (Ní Lionáin and Davis 2016, 128-33) Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 13 December, 2016

Neolithic passage tomb; dates to the late 4th to early 3rd millennium BCE. It is part of the Boyne Valley complex, a significant area for early ceremonial and funerary monuments in Ireland.