Irish archaeologists have discovered an ancient megalithic tomb. The tomb was seen and sketched in the 19th century, but was lost for almost 200 years.
local scholar billy mag froinThe archaeologist and folklorist from Sacred Heart University in Dingle, Ireland, discovered the tomb using photogrammetry. Photogrammetry is a technique that digitally stitches together photographs to create virtual 3D models that can be rotated and examined in detail.
Mag Floin lives in the house at the bottom of the hill where the grave was rediscovered near Ballyfellitter, a village on the tip of the Dingle Peninsula in southwestern Ireland. For the past few years, he has been combing the landscape with his camera, searching for the grave, which was reportedly destroyed years after it was last seen in 1838.
In September, while creating a photogrammetry model from photos of the proposed site, I noticed that the shape of one of the stones I had seen a few days earlier resembled a 19th century painting.
“I rotated one of the stones on the screen and noticed that it matched one of the stones in the 1838 illustration,” he told Live Science. “So I knew at the time that I was on the right path.”
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The site was investigated in December by Mag Floin and archaeologists from the National Monuments Authority of Ireland, and was discovered to be a 4,000-year-old tomb known as ‘Artoire na Greine’ (Irish for ‘Altar of the Sun’). It was confirmed that there is.
ancient tomb
Mag Frown explained that a British aristocrat named Georgiana Chatterton visited the tomb in 1838 and made sketches of it. However, approximately 14 years later, in 1852, an antiquarian named Richard Hitchcock reported that the tomb had been “broken up and removed”, presumably to use the building stone.
For some 170 years after Hitchcock’s report, nothing remained and the site was thought to be “lost” until it was rediscovered by Mag Flowin. He told Live Science that only one of the ancient stones is still standing, but recent inspections have detected at least three more large stones buried under soil and shrubs at the site. Told.
Apparently the structure was “”.wedge tomb” – a megalithic style common in Ireland at the time, characterized by large boxes of upright stones topped with sloping capstones.
This style indicates that it dates back to the “Chalcolithic”, or Copper Age. This period is the period between 4,500 and 4,000 years ago, when copper began to be used in Ireland. stone age However, before the Bronze Age.
remote site
Mag Frøin said it was unlikely human remains would be found at the grave site.human bones were cremated Found in a wedge tomb elsewhere However, the ground at Altoire-na-Grêne was probably too waterlogged for anyone to survive. However, based on other graves, it is likely that the cremated remains of several people were buried there, he said.
Some of Ireland’s megalithic tombs are Aiming for the midwinter sunrise, and its name recorded by Chatterton suggests that Artoire na Grain may have had a similar arrangement. The tomb was built into the spine of a hill, offering stunning views of the nearby countryside and sea. Mag Fhloinn’s next challenge is to find an easy way to access the site.
“The way I found it was to climb over a barbed wire fence, but not everyone wants to do that,” he said.