Beaghmore
The stone circles of Beaghmore ( Irish An Bheathaidh Mhór ) are 13.5 km northwest of Cookstown in County Tyrone in Northern Ireland and belong to the Ulster circles . They were discovered by peat cutters in the Sperrin Mountains in the mid-20th century . The rather low stones of the seven circles had been completely covered by the moor over the centuries . It dates back to 1600 BC. Dated.
An area of 20,000 m² was examined between 1945 and 1949 and again in 1965, revealing circles, small heaps of stones and rows of stones . The facility is unique in the world. The largest of the standing menhirs is 1.2 m high; most of them are just over the size of a head. The complex, which already had an older predecessor, is considered to be a Bronze Age cult site . The circles are Scheduled Monuments .
- Beaghmore stone circles
The "Dragon's teeth" is a stone circle , the interior of which is completely covered with stone material. Similar architecture has only been found in Ireland at the Kealkill Stone Circle in County Cork . The main features of Beaghmore and Castledamph are tangent stone circles, associated with small piles of stones and alignments. Irish stone circles can only be found (with a few exceptions) in the provinces of Munster and Ulster . The stone circles of the Cork-Kerry series lie in the southwest, where the counties of Cork and Kerry protrude. In the north, County Tyrone is most numerically represented among the stone circles of the Ulster series .
Parallels
The only French example of the tangential kind is Er Lannic . Similar in shape but unlithic designs are Fort Navan , near Emain Macha in County Armagh , the royal seat of Ulster and Deer Park Farms in County Antrim . Here, too, there are tangential circles (but made of wickerwork), which are of different sizes, designed in the shape of an eight. Circular trenches from the Iron Age were excavated in Rheine -Altenrheine in North Rhine-Westphalia .
See also
literature
- Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland: Historic monuments of Northern Ireland. An introduction and guide . Her Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO), Belfast 1987, ISBN 0-337-08180-8 .
- Jürgen E. Walkowitz: The megalithic syndrome. European cult sites of the Stone Age (= contributions to the prehistory and early history of Central Europe. Vol. 36). Beier & Beran, Langenweißbach 2003, ISBN 3-930036-70-3 .
Web links
Coordinates: 54 ° 42 ′ 14 " N , 6 ° 56 ′ 11" W.