Carricknagat Megalithic Tombs
DatedEst. 3750–2900 BCE
No licensed photograph yetWe have no photograph we may publish for this site, so the interpretive 3D view leads instead.
Overview
About this site
What the sources say
The court tomb known as Carricknagat Megalithic Tombs lies in County Sligo, Carricknagat, Ireland. Its entries are Wikidata item Q33093089; the position in the catalogue is 54.1885° N, 8.4015° W.
Built from structured records, not from an articleSources and licences
Where it sits in time
The site's dated range, placed against world reference points.
The scale is logarithmic: each step to the left is about ten times older than the last.
The full article
About Carricknagat Megalithic Tombs
This kind of monument hereSources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
A court cairn or court tomb is a type of chambered cairn identified by an open, uncovered courtyard connected to one or more roofed burial chambers. In the period 3900 to 3500 BCE more than 390 court cairns were built in Ireland and over 100 in south-west Scotland, where they are called Clyde cairns or Clyde-Carlingford cairns. The Clyde cairns are generally considered the earliest chambered cairns in Scotland, and they are distributed from the Solway Firth area north to the southern Hebrides. Many monuments were built in several phases and later reused in the Early Bronze Age. Further down this page, About this kind of monument gives the whole of “Irish and Scottish court tombs”.
DatingSources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
Sources for this section
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
Typological estimate, not a date for this site: monuments of this kind in this region are normally dated 3750 BCE to 2900 BCE. The range comes from what is known about court tomb monuments in Ireland; nothing measured on this site itself is on record, so it may be younger or older than the range suggests.
The range rests on this regional background (source: the Wikipedia article “Court cairn”): The earliest court cairns were built around 3750 BC and new monuments continued to be built and existing ones enlarged until 2900 BC.
Landscape and neighbours
The catalogue lists 1 other site within 1 km, 2 within 5 km and 5 within 10 km; none of them is of the same kind. In County Sligo, Ireland, 7 of the 23 catalogued sites are classed as court tomb.
Nearest to it are Giant's grave (0.9 km north-west, portal tomb); Cloghagadaide (4.3 km north-west, stone row); Carns Cairn (8.1 km north-west, megalithic mound); Knocknashammer Cist (9.6 km north-west, cist). The catalogue is assembled from open records and is not complete, so unrecorded monuments may lie closer.
Records and protectionSources for this section
Sources for this section
Heritage records attach the status national monument of Ireland to this site. The open records for it are Wikidata (Q33093089), where corrections and further identifiers can be added. Sites of this kind often lie on farmland or other private ground, so check local access rules before visiting and leave the monument as you found it.
How this page was madeSources for this section
Sources for this section
This page was built automatically from Wikidata (CC0), the heritage register named above and the regional article “Irish and Scottish court tombs”, written for the Atlas from the Wikipedia articles it cites (CC BY-SA 4.0), plus distances and counts computed from the catalogue coordinates. It contains no AI-written text.
Tradition and region
About this kind of monument
Irish and Scottish court tombs
A court cairn or court tomb is a type of chambered cairn identified by an open, uncovered courtyard connected to one or more roofed burial chambers. In the period 3900 to 3500 BCE more than 390 court cairns were built in Ireland and over 100 in south-west Scotland, where they are called Clyde cairns or Clyde-Carlingford cairns. The Clyde cairns are generally considered the earliest chambered cairns in Scotland, and they are distributed from the Solway Firth area north to the southern Hebrides. Many monuments were built in several phases and later reused in the Early Bronze Age.
The courtyard is oval or circular, with U-shaped and semicircular courts also known, and its boundary is typically lined with large standing stones. A narrow stone-lined entry leads from the court into the roofed chambers. At Creevykeel in County Sligo, the first court cairn excavated in Ireland, Harvard archaeologists worked in 1935 and concluded that the Neolithic in Ireland began in 3900 BCE, more than a hundred years before the first appearance of court tombs, and that court tombs were widely reused in the Early Bronze Age. Excavations at court tombs have yielded cremated and unburnt human bone and round-bottomed pottery.
In Scotland, Cairnholy in Dumfries and Galloway is the site of two chambered tombs of the Clyde type on a hillside overlooking Wigtown Bay, 4 kilometres east of Carsluith; the two lie within 150 metres of each other.
Court tombs are dated by radiocarbon dates of the bone they contain and the pottery.
When visiting, look for the standing stones of the forecourt and the entrance to the chambers.
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: Court cairn, Wikipedia: Chambered cairn, Wikipedia: Cairn Holy, Wikipedia: Passage grave · CC BY-SA 4.0
Lore
Evidence & Lore
What the sources actually support — and, kept apart, what has been claimed.
What the evidence supports
Dates
Est. 3750–2900 BCEHow this date was established: Type comparisonTypical range for court tombs in Ireland; this site has not been dated itself. The earliest court cairns were built around 3750 BC and new monuments continued to be built and existing ones enlarged until 2900 BC.Source for this date
Where it stands
Ireland
The pin marks the monument itself — its exact point.
- Coordinates
- 54°11′19″ N, 8°24′05″ WFor a GPS or map app: 54.18851, -8.40149
Access is as our sources describe it; we have not visited the site to check.
Nearby
The closest sites in the Atlas, by straight line.
Giant's grave4000–3000 BCE
Cloghagadaide- Megalithic mound (tumulus with integral stones)Carns Cairn3700–2900 BCE
- CistKnocknashammer Cist
Abbeyquarter North Tomb3400–2900 BCE
Listoghil3095–1955 BCE
Magheraghanrush Court Tomb3050–2950 BCE- Passage tomb (passage grave)Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery W-M 9a3400–2900 BCE
Sources
Every record behind this page, with the link it came from.
2 sources behind this page
- 01Wikidata Q33093089wikidata.org
- 02Source for this dateen.wikipedia.org
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Around this place
The ten nearest sites, by compass
Credit
Text, licence and sources
This page is assembled from open records (Wikidata, CC0; OpenStreetMap, ODbL) and a tradition article paraphrasing Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0). No article exists for this site, and nothing here is written by a model.
- Wikidata Q33093089CC0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0
- en.wikipedia.orgCC BY-SA 4.0