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Court tomb in Prospecthill

Court tomb

What is recorded here

Prospectivehill held a five-and-a-half-metre court tomb facing the inner reaches of Mweeloon Bay, its chambers divided by a sill-stone and its entrance framed by jambs. People may have laid the dead beneath displaced roofstones while pastureland and outcropping rock watched above. Then in 1964 a bulldoer cut through that old arrangement during land clearance, pushing the orthostats to the northern fence as though forgetting what the stones had kept.
In pastureland with outcropping rock, some 350m to the S of the seashore at the inner reaches of Mweeloon Bay. This tomb comprised the ruins of a gallery (L 5.5m), aligned NW-SE, divided into two chambers by a sill-stone. The entrance, at SE, was between two jambs; the N jamb was flanked by a single courtstone. A large displaced stone, possibly a roofstone, lay in the front chamber. The tomb was bulldozed during the course of land clearance in 1964. The orthostats were pushed to the fence at the N boundary of the field. (Holt 1912, 249-50; McCaffrey 1952, 11-12; de Valera and Ó Nualláin 1972, 15-16) See linked document with details from Ruaidhrí de Valera and Seán Ó Nualláin, Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland. Volume III. Counties Galway, Roscommon, Leitrim, Longford, Westmeath, Laoighis, Offaly, Kildare, Cavan. (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1972). Compiled by: Galway Archaeological Survey, UCG Date of upload: 19 August 2019
Court tomb, dating to the Neolithic period (c. 4000–2500 BCE). Its layout, with a gallery and divided chambers, reflects an early form of megalithic tomb construction significant for understanding funerary practices and social organisation in prehistoric Ireland.

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What survives
Recorded monument

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