Applying the latest theories on wedge tombs to the Kilcommon Group in North Tipperary.

Introduction

Fig. 1 Knockcurraghbola Commons TN039-009 by Derek Ryan

This essay will investigate the construction of wedge tombs during the Chalcolithic period c. 2500 – 2000 BC. It will examine possible reasons for this resurgence in building. It will compare and contrast the location and size of the wedge tombs at Roughan Hill, Co. Clare & this essay study area; the Kilcommon group of Co. Tipperary.

Wedge tombs are simple stone tombs which consist of a narrow gallery with a characteristic narrowing and lowering at the back. The gallery can be divided by a septal-stone into a short front chamber known as a portico. They have a consistent orientation on the western and south-western horizon and they seem to be orientated to where the sun sets in the colder and darker months of winter. Jones (2007, 223) postulates that they are aligned in this direction to “incorporate the symbolic dichotomy of light and life versus darkness and death” and towards a possible land of the dead.

There is evidence generally of repeated activities at these tombs and insertions within them such as cremated and inhumated remains. Probable votive offerings within tombs are often found such as at Altar in Co. Cork (Waddell, 1998, 98) and possible metal offerings around tombs such as at Lough Gur, Co. Limerick (Jones et al, 2015, 5). Wedge tombs are often located close to contemporary settlements such as at Lough Gur in Co. Limerick (Jones, 1997, 230) and Roughan Hill in Co. Clare (Jones et al, 2015, 5). 

During the period that wedge tomb building arose a number of events were happening externally to Ireland.

Resurgence of megalithism

In this period Ireland was integrated into far flung exchange networks with the rest of Europe (Jones et al, 2015, 3). It is best evidenced by the finds of beaker pottery from Western Europe at sites in Western Ireland such as at Roughan Hill (Jones et al, 2015, 16).

During this period metal working is also likely to have begun in Ireland. In Co. Kerry there is extensive evidence of mineral extraction at Ross Island. Minerals from this and other mines were worked into various items which have been found in a number of wedge tomb contexts such as at Lough Gur, Co. Limerick.

How these new ideas or technologies came to Ireland is not completely clear. Jones et al (2015, 3) states that “As know-how and ideas could only move as far as people could carry them, the transfer of metallurgical knowledge to Ireland implies human mobility. The scale and nature of this mobility are issues which are still being debated.” As such, during this period there is likely to have been population movement and / or population growth.

These factors may have challenged the existing Neolithic social systems and lead to a period of instability within society.

It has been theorised that megalith building is linked to periods of change. Therefore since the last phase of construction of megaliths in Ireland (the passage tombs) there may have been a period of stability of up to 600 years. It is possible that these new ideas may have led to either the old elite or a new elite having to legitimise their claim to social status by building megaliths and re-evoking the ancestors.

Jones et al (2015, 8) states "It seems that when mortuary rituals were emphasized, it is often because the ancestors are called upon to legitimize social statuses that may be open to challenge, whether the statuses open to challenge are traditional or newly conceived. This may occur in context of changing ideologies, changes in the status system, or both".

If status’s were not fixed as they had been for generations, this may have resulted in social competition and this could be one reason for the variation in size of the wedge tombs.

It may be that due to possible social instability, the building of wedge tombs was a demonstration of collective effort. The construction may have brought the group together and they were possibly directed by a group leader. This would help demonstrate the older social structures and perhaps reinforce the status of a group leader.

Recent ethnographical studies in West Sumba in Indonesia have shown similar findings to this. In West Sumba, findings as to why they currently build similar structures include “establishing long-lasting physical links to specific locales, maintaining relationships with dead ancestors, and fostering group solidarity amongst the living, the most important factor motivating people to build megalithic tombs is the acquisition of power.” (Jones et al, 2015, 10).

In West Sumba tombs are located at a Clan’s ancestral village. Larger tombs show that the builder of the tomb is wealthy and prominent and also that the Clan of the deceased interred within is important. There is competition for status with other clans in the area. (Jones et al, 2015, 15).

In ‘Monuments, Landscape and Identity in Chalcolithic Ireland’ the authors examine the significance of Roughan Hill in the context of the wedge tombs in Co. Clare.

Roughan Hill

Roughan Hill is located in the south-east of the limestone area known as the Burren in Co. Clare. It is at a topographical and ecological divide between the lowlands of the River Fergus and the limestone uplands of the Burren. It is the southernmost of a serious of hills running in south-west to north-east direction. The soils are thin rendzinas and areas of bare bedrock are exposed in places but the soil cover is generally better than in other parts of the upland Burren (Jones et al, 2015, 15). Its altitude is just over 130m and its southern slope drops steeply to the River Fergus, approx. 100m below the crest of the hill.

Within Co. Clare and Ireland it has the densest concentration of wedge tombs in the country. It is near the convergence of route ways in the area. To the south is the head of the River Fergus. This links it to the Shannon Estuary and west to the Atlantic and east via the River Shannon into the middle of Ireland. It is also near where two natural land routes from the east meet and begin north into the Burren.

Wedge tombs are not the earliest monuments in the vicinity of Roughan Hill and there are thought to be four earlier monuments including nearby Parknabinnia court-tomb. Other monuments from the Chalcolithic include a number of cairns.

On Roughan Hill a number of contemporary habitation enclosures have been identified very close to wedge-tombs. However more wedge-tombs than enclosures have been identified in a ratio of roughly 3:1 (Jones et al, 2015, 20). Using inferences from West Sumba, where one wedge tomb equates to one clan, the paper discusses whether this means the hill is of ritual importance to a wider population and may have a regionally significant location in a ritual sense. 

The following chart shows the length in metres of the wedge tombs on Roughan Hill and compares them with County Clare in general. The wedge tombs from Roughan Hill are in dark grey.

Fig. 2 by Jones et al (2015, 10)

Kilcommon group area

Fig. 3 – Kilcommon group wedge tombs by National Monuments Service

There are twelve existing wedge tombs and one recorded but now destroyed wedge tomb within 8km of the village of Kilcommon, Co. Tipperary. De Valera & Ó’Nualláin describe them as the ‘Kilcommon group’ and state that they are “clustered around Mauherslieve or Mother Mountain (543m)” (De Valera & Ó’Nualláin, 1982, 113). There is also one court-tomb to the south of Baurnadomeeny at Shallyballyedmond. To the north-west is the Silvermine Mountains and Keeper Hill and to the south-west the Slieve Felims. To the south is Knockastanna and Gortnageragh Hill and to the east Ring Hill and Knocklough. So we can see this is a mountainous upland area.

Fig. 4 Baurnadomeeny TN038-009 by Derek Ryan

The tombs vary in altitude between 215m to 335m above sea-level. The soils in the area are principally Peaty Podzols and Acid Brown Earths and most of the tombs are located on “well-drained pasture land, on hills or slopes, above the deeper soils in the valleys of the rivers and streams emanating from the watershed area around Mauherslieve Mountain.” (De Valera & Ó’Nualláin, 1982, 113).

Most of this pasture is reclaimed from bog land but it may be that it was originally pasture land during the Chalcolithic, turned into bog land following the construction of the tombs and was reclaimed back to pasture in modern times.

Fig. 5 Curreeny Commons TN033-025 by Derek Ryan

Copper deposits have been found around the Kilcommon group area. There was a copper mine at near-by Lackamore (approx. 6km to the west of Baurnadomeeny) that was exploited as late as the 1960s. De Valera & Ó’Nualláin state that “extensive "old men'sworkings' were noted at the Lackamore mine (Jukes, Kinahan and Wynn 1860, 36)”. They also propose that stone mauls found in the district may have been of a similar date to ones found at Bronze Age copper mines at Mount Gabriel in Cork. (De Valera & Ó’Nualláin, 1982, 113).

There are two further wedge tombs outside our study area to the north of the Kilcommon group. One at Cooleen is 3km from another copper mine at Ballynoe and the other at Lackamore (this is a different townland to where the copper mines are located) looks on to the River Shannon. De Valera & Ó’Nualláin (1982, 114) state that “The River Shannon flows between the north Tipperary tombs and the concentrations in east Clare (Vol .1) and, together with its tributaries, would have offered obvious and convenient routes inland which may have been availed of by the tomb-builders.” It is possible that these two tombs (Cooleen & Lackamore) were links on the route from the large concentration of wedge-tombs in Clare and the Kilcommon group of tombs.

As we can see in figure 3 the tombs are located in the vicinity of the current route ways through the mountain area from north-south (R497) & east-west (R503). A number of rivers rise in the highlands in the Kilcommon group area and flow in all directions from this area. (E.g. The Mulcaire River flows west from the area of Curreeny Commons to the River Shannon).

Compare & contrast Roughan Hill with the Kilcommon group.

Both are in areas with older monuments, Shanballyedmond court tomb is in the Kilcommon group area and Parknabinnia the Roughan Hill area.

Both are in upland areas.

Both seem to be in areas where land and water route ways converge.

To date there is no evidence of settlement enclosures in the Kilcommon group area.

We can see from the following graph that there are significant differences in the size of the wedge tombs in the Kilcommon group versus Roughan Hill (See Appendix I for back-up).

Fig. 6 Comparison of length of wedge tombs in the Kilcommon group versus Roughan Hill by Derek Ryan

The largest tomb on Roughan Hill is in the range of 4.6 - 4.7 metres in length. However in the Kilcommon group area the largest tomb is in the range of 7.2 - 7.3 metres in length. This is in the same range as the largest tomb in all of County Clare.

In the Kilcommon group there are four tombs between the sizes of 6.8 - 7.3 metres.

Jones (2014) suggests that wedge-tombs in the 3m range would require the extended family coming together to build it. Wedge tombs between 4.0 - 4.5m would require members of a larger lineage. For the wedge-tombs of over 7m he suggests they would require a work force on a large regional scale. At Roughan Hill only the first two sizes are represented while in the Kilcommon group all three are and this suggests differing circumstances in their construction.  

There is a large difference in the number of the smaller tombs between 2.0 and 4.9 metres. On Roughan Hill there are 14 wedge-tombs while in the Kilcommon group there are only 6 wedge-tombs.  

Discussion / Conclusion

We have reviewed some of the possible reasons for the resurgence of megalithism in the Chalcolithic period, namely that outside social pressures may have led to the requirement to reassert social status by the construction of wedge-tombs.

We examined the location of the wedge-tombs on Roughan Hill & in the Kilcommon group and found that both were located in upland areas and in the vicinity of both land and possible water routes.

We established that both areas were located in the vicinity of early monuments dating to the early Neolithic and that both had Neolithic court-tombs in the area.

We calculated that four of the wedge-tombs were of a greater length in the Kilcommon group than those at the Roughan Hill and as such a larger regional workforce may have been required to build them.

Fig. 7 Loughbrack TN039-014 by Derek Ryan

Further Study

To date no settlement enclosures have been recorded in the area of the Kilcommon group. It is likely through further surveying that there should be settlements in the vicinity of the wedge-tombs in the area as have been found at Roughan Hill.

A nodal map of the four wedge-tombs of over 6.8m in the Kilcommon group could be suggestive that each of these wedge tombs were localised individual ancestral settlements similar to Roughan Hill. The author recommends further study to ascertain whether this hypothesis is correct (See Appendix II).

Bibliography

De Valera, R. & Ó’Nualláin, S., 1982, Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland. Vol. 4, Counties Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Tipperary. Dublin, The Stationary Office.

Farrelly, J. & O’Brien, C., 2002, Archaeological Inventory of County Tipperary Vol. I – North Tipperary. Dublin, The Stationary Office.

Jones, C. 2003. Neolithic Beginnings on Roughan Hill and the Burren. In I. Armit, E. Murphy, E. Nelis and D. Simpson (eds) Neolithic Settlement in Ireland and Western Britain,188-94. Oxford, Oxbow Books.

Jones, C., 2007, Temple of Stone, Exploring the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland, Cork, Collins Press.

Jones, C. 2014, "Why Build A Wedge Tomb Here? A Study Of Monuments, Landscape And Identity Around 2000Bc", Presentation, NUIG Galway, 21 March.

Jones, C., McVeigh, T. & Ó’Maoldúin, R., 2015, Monuments, Landscape and Identity in Chalcolithic Ireland, In Springs, D. (ed.) Landscape and Identity:Archaeology and Human Geography, 3 – 26. Oxford. BAR, International Series 2709.

Waddell, J., 1998, The Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland, Galway, Galway University Press.

Appendix I

Lengths of wedge-tombs in Kilcommon group of Tipperary. Only 10 of the 13 have remains that the length can be measured.  

Kilcommon Group Wedge Tomb lengths
Taken from Archaeological Inventory of County Tipperary Vol. I – North Tipperary	m
Foilnamuck	4.6
Cureeny Commons	7
Rearnogy More	2.7
Baurnadomeeny	7.2
Knocknabansha	2.1
Knockmaroe	Not measurable
Knockcurraghbola Commons	7
Loughbrack	6.8
Knockcurraghbola Commons	4.2
Knockcurraghbola Commons	Not measurable
Knockshanbrittas	3.7
Knockshanbrittas	3.2
Foilycleary	Not measurable

Appendix II – Nodal Map of the four large wedge tombs as possible ancestral settlements.