Knockatotaun

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Schematic sketch of Wedge Tomb using Iceland as an example

In the townland of Knockatotaun ( Irish Cnoc an Toiteáin , German  "Brandhügel" ) southwest of Collooney near Tubbercurry in County Sligo in Ireland , on the southern slope of a small hill, there is a portal tomb , which has some similarities with a wedge tomb and in newer OS maps as "Giant's Grave" ( German  "Hünengrab" ), in older maps as "Druid's Altar" ( German  "Druidenaltar" ) is marked. In the British Isles, portal tombs are megalithic systems in which two equally high, upright stones with a door stone in between form the front of a chamber, which is covered with a sometimes huge capstone.

Its large, horizontally lying, 0.35 m thick capstone measures around 3.0 × 2.7 m. Its underside is 1.1 m high and seems to have been worked over. It rests on four orthostats , some of which are covered with encrusted fossils. The orientation of the chamber is northwest-southeast, with the wider end to the southeast. The orthostat at the “rear” end is criss-crossed with quartz veins. There are large amounts of scattered material nearby that came from the cairn . Some small stones on the southeast side can be the remains of an outer wall, as is typical for Wedge Tombs .

See also

literature

  • Anthony Weir: Early Ireland: A Field Guide . 1980
  • Seán Ó Nualláin: Survey of the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland , Volume V: County Sligo, Dublin 1989, p. 98 ( PDF )

Web links

Coordinates: 54 ° 7 ′ 41.4 "  N , 8 ° 39 ′ 43.4"  W.