Newgrange () is a prehistoric monument in County Meath in Ireland, placed on a rise overlooking the River Boyne, west of the town of Drogheda.O'Kelly, Michael J. 1982. Newgrange: Archaeology, Art and Legend. London: Thames and Hudson. p. 13. It is an exceptionally grand passage tomb built during the Neolithic Period, around 3100 BC, making it older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids. Newgrange is the main monument in the Brú na Bóinne complex, a World Heritage Site that also includes the passage tombs of Knowth and Dowth, as well as other henges, burial mounds and standing stones.
Newgrange consists of a large circular mound with an inner stone passageway and cruciform chamber. Burnt and unburnt human bones and possible grave goods or votive offerings were found in this chamber. The monument has a striking façade made mostly of white quartz cobblestones and ringed by engraved kerbstones. Many of the larger stones of Newgrange are covered in megalithic art. The mound is also ringed by a stone circle. Some of the material that makes up the monument came from as far as the Mournes and Wicklow Mountains. There is no agreement on its purpose, but it is believed to have had religious significance. It is aligned so that the rising sun on the winter solstice shines through a "roofbox" above the entrance and floods the inner chamber. Several other passage tombs in Ireland are aligned with solstices and equinoxes, and Cairn G at Carrowkeel has a similar "roofbox".Carrowkeel Cairn G. The Megalithic Portal. Newgrange shares similarities with some other Neolithic monuments in Western Europe; especially Gavrinis in Brittany, which has a similar preserved facing and large carved stones,O'Kelly and O'Kelly, 102 Maeshowe in Orkney, with its large corbelled chamber,Laing 1974, p. 42 and Bryn Celli Ddu in Wales.
Its initial period of use lasted around 1,000 years. Newgrange then gradually became a ruin, although the area continued to be a site of ritual activity. It featured in Irish mythology and folklore, in which it is said to be a dwelling of the deities, particularly The Dagda and his son Aengus. Antiquarians first began its study in the seventeenth century, and archaeological excavations began in the twentieth century. Archaeologist Michael O'Kelly led the most extensive of these from 1962 to 1975 and also reconstructed the front of the monument, a controversial reconstruction. This included an inward-curving dark stone wall to ease visitor access. Newgrange is a popular tourist site and, according to archaeologist Colin Renfrew, is "unhesitatingly regarded by the prehistorian as the great national monument of Ireland" and as one of the most important megalithic structures in Europe.Renfrew, Colin, in O'Kelly, Michael J. 1982. Newgrange: Archaeology, Art and Legend. London: Thames and Hudson. p. 7.
Name and etymology
The monument now known as Newgrange forms part of the prehistoric landscape called Brú na Bóinne, meaning the palace or mansion of the Boyne. The name refers to the ceremonial complex along the River Boyne that includes the major passage tombs of Knowth, Dowth, and Newgrange itself.
In early Irish literature, the mound itself appears under several related names, including Sí an Bhrú and Síd in Broga. These derive from Old Irish terms associated with supernatural mounds or dwellings of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the mythological beings of Irish tradition. In this context, the name can be interpreted as meaning "the fairy mound of the Brú" or "the mound of the palace".O'Kelly, Michael J. 1982. Newgrange: Archaeology, Art and Legend. London: Thames and Hudson. pp. 41–44.
These forms reflect normal grammatical features of the Irish language. The word Brú ("palace" or "great house") appears as Bhrú after the definite article through a process known as lenition, a consonant mutation common in Irish grammar. The term síd refers to a mound or dwelling place of supernatural beings in early Irish tradition.
Medieval Irish texts associate the mound with the god Aengus (Aengus Óg), who was said to dwell at the Brú. These traditions are now considered to reflect later interpretations of the landscape rather than the original prehistoric function of the monument.
The modern name Newgrange is much more recent. It derives from a nearby farm or estate known as the "New Grange", part of lands belonging to Mellifont Abbey in the medieval period. Antiquarian writers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries adopted this estate name when describing the prehistoric mound, and the form Newgrange subsequently became standard in archaeological literature.O'Kelly, Michael J. 1982. Newgrange: Archaeology, Art and Legend. London: Thames and Hudson. p. 24.
Description
Mound and passage The Newgrange monument primarily consists of a large mound, built of alternating layers of earth and stones, with grass growing on top and a reconstructed facade of flattish white quartz stones studded at intervals with large rounded cobbles covering part of the circumference. It consists of about 200,000 tonnes of material. The mound is wide at its widest point and high, and covers of ground. Within the mound is a chambered passage, which may be accessed by an entrance on the southeastern side of the monument. The passage stretches for 19 metres (60 ft), or about a third of the way into the centre of the structure. At the end of the passage are three small chambers off a larger central chamber with a high corbelled vault roof. Each of the smaller chambers has a large flat "basin stone" where the bones of the dead may have been deposited during prehistoric times. Whether it was a burial site remains unclear. The walls of this passage are made up of large stone slabs called orthostats, twenty-two of which are on the western side and twenty-one on the eastern side. They average 1.5 metres in height;O'Kelly (1982:21) several are decorated with carvings (as well as graffiti from the period after the rediscovery). The orthostats decrease in height the further into the passageway as a result of the passage being slightly graded from being constructed on the rise of a hill. The ceiling shows no evidence of smoke.
Standing stones Situated around the perimeter of the mound is a circle of standing stones. Twelve standing stones survive out of a possible original thirty-eight. Most archaeologists suggest that they were added later, during the Bronze Age, centuries after the original monument had been abandoned as a ritual centre. This view is disputed and relates to a carbon date from a standing stone setting that intersects with a later timber post circle, the theory being, that the stone in question could have been moved and later re-set in its original position.
Art Newgrange contains various examples of graphic Neolithic rock art carved onto its stone surfaces.Joseph Nechvatal, Immersive Ideals / Critical Distances. LAP Lambert Academic Publishing. 2009, p. 163 These carvings fit into ten categories, five of which are curvilinear (circles, spirals, arcs, serpentiniforms, and dot-in-circles) and the other five of which are rectilinear (chevrons, lozenges, radials, parallel lines, and offsets). They are marked by wide differences in style, the skill level required to produce them, and on how deeply carved they are.O'Kelly (1982:146–147). One of the most notable types of art at Newgrange are the triskele-like features found on the entrance stone. It is approximately three metres long and 1.2 metres high (10 ft long and 4 ft high), and about five tonnes in weight. It has been described as "one of the most famous stones in the entire repertory of megalithic art." Archaeologists believe that most of the carvings were produced prior to the stones being erected, although the entrance stone was carved in situ before the kerbstones were placed alongside it.O'Kelly (1982:149).
Various archaeologists have speculated as to the meanings of the designs, with some, such as George Coffey (in the 1890s), believing them to be purely decorative, whilst others, such as O'Kelly, believed them to have some sort of symbolic purpose, because some of the carvings had been in places that would not have been visible, such as at the bottom of the orthostatic slabs below ground level.O'Kelly (1982:148). Extensive research on how the art relates to alignments and astronomy in the Boyne Valley complex was carried out by American-Irish researcher, Martin Brennan.
Early history
The Neolithic people who built the monument were native agriculturalists, descended most likely from a vast Anatolian immigration wave 9,000 years ago - that eventually displaced indigenous hunter-gatherer populations - growing crops and raising animals such as cattle in the area where their settlements were located.
Construction The original complex of Newgrange was built around 3100 BC. According to carbon-14 dates,E. Grogan, "Prehistoric and Early Historic Cultural Change at Brugh na Bóinne", Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 91C, 1991, pp. 126–132 it is approximately 500 years older than the current form of Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, as well as predating the Mycenaean culture of ancient Greece.O'Kelly (1982:48) Some put its period of construction somewhat later, at 3000 to 2500 BC. Geological analysis indicates that the thousands of pebbles that make up the cairn, which together would have weighed about 200,000 tonnes, came from the nearby river terraces of the Boyne. There is a large pond in this area that is believed to be the site quarried for the pebbles by the builders of Newgrange. Most of the 547 slabs that make up the inner passage, chambers, and the outer kerbstones are greywacke. Some or all of the greywacke stones may have been brought from sites approximately 5 km away, while a portion of them may have come from the rocky beach at Clogherhead, County Louth, about 20 km to the northeast.Tilley, Christopher. Body and Image: Explorations in Landscape Phenomenology. Left Coast Press, 2008. p. 160 The facade and entrance were built with white quartz cobblestones from the Wicklow Mountains, about 50 km to the south; dark rounded granodiorite cobbles from the Mourne Mountains, about 50 km to the north; dark gabbro cobbles from the Cooley Mountains; and banded siltstone from the shore at Carlingford Lough. The stones may have been transported to Newgrange by sea and up the River Boyne by fastening them to the underside of boats at low tide. None of the structural slabs were quarried, for they show signs of having been weathered naturally, so they must have been collected and then transported, largely uphill, to the Newgrange site.O'Kelly (1982:117) The granite basins found inside the chambers also came from the Mournes.
Frank Mitchell suggested that the monument could have been built within a space of five years, basing his estimation upon the likely number of local inhabitants during the Neolithic and the amount of time they could have devoted to building it rather than farming. This estimate, however, was criticised by Michael J. O'Kelly and his archaeological team, who believed that it would have taken a minimum of thirty years to build.O'Kelly (1982:117–118)
Burials