The remains of a Bronze Age tomb previously thought to have been destroyed and lost have been discovered in County Kerry on the Atlantic coast of Ireland.
The tomb, known locally as Altóir na Gréine – the sun altar – stood on a hill outside the village of Ballyferriter on the Dingle Peninsula for around 4,000 years before disappearing in the mid-19th century.
Georgiana Chatterton, an English aristocrat and traveler, visited the site and sketched the monument in 1838, but 14 years later an antiquarian named Richard Hitchcock reported that it had been broken up and carried away, presumably for building purposes.
The grave robbers, it seems, were not so thorough.
Billy Mag Fhloinn, a folklorist who is part of an archaeological mapping project, recently visited and filmed the site. When he converted the video into a 3D scan, he noticed that a stone in the undergrowth looked like one of Lady Chatterton’s Victorian-era sketches.
He sent the material to the National Monuments Service in Dublin, who sent archaeologist Caimin O’Brien, who confirmed it belonged to a so-called wedge grave dating from the Early Bronze Age between 2500BC and 2000BC.
There is a cover stone and several large upright stones called orthostats, which make up about a quarter of the original grave, Mag Fhloinn said Thursday. “People assumed it was all destroyed.”
The grave will now be added to the database of national monuments.
Ireland has several hundred wedge graves, used by Bronze Age peoples for interment and for ceremonies.
“Most point west or south-west towards the setting sun, so they may be linked to their broader cosmological understanding of the world,” said Mag Fhloinn.
It is still unclear who broke open the grave, or why. “In the 19th century there was quite a taboo about destroying these sites – it was said to bring bad luck or disaster,” Mag Fhloinn said.
He is part of a grave mapping project run by Sacred Heart University, an American institution with a campus in Dingle.
“The significance of the rediscovery of the wedge tomb is to bring it back into the archaeological record for the archaeological community to study,” O’Brien told RTÉ. the discovery first reported.
“For the first time in over 180 years, archaeologists know where the grave is located and this will improve our understanding of wedge grave distribution.”
Tony Bergin, president of the Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society, said it was an exciting discovery.
“There is a theory that this particular type of grave is linked to a people who did copper mining,” he said. “There is also a comparison with similar tombs found in Brittany in France.”
