Ireland’s City of the Dead

Neolithic passage tombs shed light on Ireland’s pre-Celtic past

Newgrange passage tomb. Photo by the author.

Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth are three neolothic passage tombs in western Ireland. Located within two miles of each other at a bend in the Boyne River, they form a necropolis, basically a city of the dead. Carbon-dating has determined the oldest of the three was built in 3,200 BC, a thousand years earlier than Stonehenge and two thousand years before the Celts arrived from Europe.

From a distance, they look like grassy mounds. Look closer and there’s an entrance that leads to a long interior passageway and one or more burial chambers. This is where the deceased were cremated.

Newgrange, midway between the Knowth and Dowth, is the most prominent. It’s an imperfect circle 262 feet in diameter and buttressed by a belt of quartz rocks. It was discovered by accident in 1699 by a local farmer anxious to mine what he thought was a quarry and although people knew about it for centuries, the site wasn’t properly examined by archeologists until 1962. Newgrange was opened to the public in 1975 and in 1993 it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Archeologists are still working at Knowth and Dowth so the public can’t see inside for themselves. Newgrange, though, is a major tourist attraction and public entry is rigidly…