Millin Bay
The megalithic complex at Millin Bay ( Irish Bá an Mhillín ) in County Down in Northern Ireland is located near Portaferry on the Ards Peninsula and was excavated in 1955 by AEP Collins and DM Waterman. Their structure does not fit into any of the current classifications of Irish megalithic systems. The scanty finds show them to be late Neolithic . It consists of a central, over-long stone box and a close-set, semi-oval stone slab, which is complemented by a counterpart made of wider and larger stones. A straight row of stones running north-south divides the oval parallel to the stone box and another seven stone boxes complete the whole. Many stones are decorated with motifs in the tradition of Irish passage tombs .
At the place of discovery that has been covered again, only the tips of some stones appear on a hill overgrown with grass. In 2004/2005, the environmental history of the site was examined as part of a research project by Rick Schulting and Barrie Hartwell.
Finds
The excavation revealed the excarnated and dismembered skeletons of 15 individuals in the elongated stone box. Perhaps, according to one interpretation, this extraordinary structure was built by a group for the bones of their ancestors that were brought here from elsewhere.
See also
literature
- Eileen Murphy: Funerary processing of the dead in prehistoric Ireland. In: Archeology Ireland. Vol. 17, No. 2, 2003, ISSN 0790-892X , pp. 13-15, JSTOR 20562666 .
Web links
- Description and picture ( Memento from October 16, 2006 in the Internet Archive )
Coordinates: 54 ° 22'5 " N , 5 ° 29'36.1" W.