See our post Family-Friendly Archaeology Day for more photos of the Mill Little Complex. Mill Little is a good example of this: three boulder burials are in a line with a standing stone pair at one end and a five-stone circle at the other. The sun was low in the sky when we visited Ballycommane and the sight of the quartz boulder gently gleaming was truly memorable.īoulder burials often occur in groups and in association with other monuments. At Bohonagh, for example, some of the support stones are of gleaming white quartz, while at Ballycommane, Cooradarrigan and Cullomane the boulder itself is quartz. William O’Brien has pointed out that quartz is a feature of West Cork prehistoric sites and this is particularly evident in the case of boulder-burials. This boulder-burial is so low-lying, in fact, that one can only reach it at low tideīallycommane – the boulder is of white quartz These are monuments that were built to be seen and to see from.Īn exception to the high ground location is found at Dunmanus on the north side of the Mizen Peninsula. There are lots of examples around us here and most of them command extensive and often panoramic views. Often situated on a high point or ridge it can be seen silhouetted against the sky – a large glacial erratic standing proud in the landscape. This one is at Rathruane More, close to a significant rock art site and with views of Mount Gabriel and Mount CorrinĪ boulder burial is a striking and unmistakable sight. What is unquestioned, though, is that they are predominantly found in the south west, especially in Cork, and that, while most occur alone, they are often found in groups, and/or in association with stone circles or standing stones. In his book, Iverni, he comments in an understated way, “The absence of human remains at Cooradarrigan and Ballycommane does pose some questions as to their use.” His findings dated the sites to the Middle Bronze Age, between 3000 and 3,500 years ago. However, William O’Brien excavated three boulder burials in the late 1980s and found no evidence of burials. A standing stone stood close by but has disappeared. The Bohonagh complex includes a multiple-stone circle, a boulder burial and a cup-marked stone. He based this belief partly on his extensive experience with other megalithic monuments, but also on the findings of the excavation of the Bohonagh complex, where Fahy found fragments of cremated bone in a pit under the boulder. Illustrations from Jack Robert’s book Exploring West Cork Previously, this type of monument was known as a dolmen, a boulder dolmen or a cromlech, but O’Nualláin was convinced that the main purpose of these boulders was to mark a burial. The support stones lift the boulder off the ground and provide a small chamber-like area under the stone. The term boulder burial was coined in the 1970s by Sean O’Nualláin, an archaeologist with the Ordnance Survey, to describe a class of monument that was quite prevalent in the south west, consisting of a single large boulder sitting on three or four support stones.
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