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Ancestral Geographies of the Neolithic, Edmonds, Bender

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<< Our Photo Pages >> Labbacallee - Wedge Tomb in Ireland (Republic of) in Co. Cork

Submitted by Anthony_Weir on Wednesday, 08 August 2012  Page Views: 27516

Neolithic and Bronze AgeSite Name: Labbacallee
Country: Ireland (Republic of) County: Co. Cork Type: Wedge Tomb
Nearest Town: Cork  Nearest Village: Glanworth
Discovery Map Number: D73
Latitude: 52.174238N  Longitude: 8.334633W
Condition:
5Perfect
4Almost Perfect
3Reasonable but with some damage
2Ruined but still recognisable as an ancient site
1Pretty much destroyed, possibly visible as crop marks
0No data.
-1Completely destroyed
3 Ambience:
5Superb
4Good
3Ordinary
2Not Good
1Awful
0No data.
4 Access:
5Can be driven to, probably with disabled access
4Short walk on a footpath
3Requiring a bit more of a walk
2A long walk
1In the middle of nowhere, a nightmare to find
0No data.
5 Accuracy:
5co-ordinates taken by GPS or official recorded co-ordinates
4co-ordinates scaled from a detailed map
3co-ordinates scaled from a bad map
2co-ordinates of the nearest village
1co-ordinates of the nearest town
0no data
4

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Labbacallee
Labbacallee submitted by GaelicLaird : The five stones at the rear eastern end of the tomb can be clearly seen here. During excavation these easily took the weight of the eastern capstone allowing access into the chamber via the roof. Also visible are the remains of the cairn upright kerbstones which survive on the south / south eastern side of the tomb. Photo taken January 2022. (Vote or comment on this photo)
Wedge Tomb in Co. Cork. 2km SE of Glanworth and 8km NW of Fermoy, by the roadside, over a wall. Signposted (SN318). This is the largest of the Irish wedge-tombs.

Three huge capstones (the largest being 7.8 meters long and weighing 10 tonnes) slope downwards towards the back.

The gallery consists of a large rectangular chamber, with a small one behind it, separated by a dividing slab, one corner of which has been trimmed off to leave a 'half-porthole'. The gallery is triple-walled, and buttressed at the back by 3 slabs set parallel with the tomb's axis. In front of the gallery are the remains of a large rectangular, unroofed portico or antechamber, wider than the gallery and cut off from it by a large slab.

It is one of many tombs — especially wedge-tombs — to be associated with the Celtic Hag-goddess: Labbacallee {Leaba Caillighe) means 'Hag's Bed'. Other tombs are associated with the lovers Dermot and Grania in the folk tradition. The sepulchre resembles a French gallery-tomb in size and design, a similarity shared by the wedge at Burren, Cavan.

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Labbacallee
Labbacallee submitted by GaelicLaird : View from the south side of the tomb, looking to the north. Photo taken January 2022. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Labbacallee
Labbacallee submitted by howe : View of the 'entrance' to this wedge tomb from the west. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Labbacallee
Labbacallee submitted by Murph : Labbacallee Wedge Tomb. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Labbacallee
Labbacallee submitted by Bladup : Labbacallee. (Vote or comment on this photo)

Labbacallee
Labbacallee submitted by howe : View of the tomb from the north.

Labbacallee
Labbacallee submitted by Bladup : Labbacallee.

Labbacallee
Labbacallee submitted by Bladup : Labbacallee, inside the chamber.

Labbacallee
Labbacallee submitted by Bladup : Labbacallee.

Poetry at Labbacallee
Poetry at Labbacallee submitted by Kinsalegreg : Reading a poem at the Labbacalle site in Cork as part of the Blackwater Poetry Festival, 2015.

Labbacallee
Labbacallee submitted by durhamnature : Plan from "Realm of the Great Goddess" via archive.org

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"Labbacallee" | Login/Create an Account | 12 News and Comments
  
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Re: Labbacallee by GaelicLaird on Monday, 04 April 2022
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Officially recorded as monument CO027-086---- and the associated cist as monument CO027-169----

This fine tomb is located in pasture, on top of low gently sloping knoll c. 450m S of Funshion River. One of the largest wedge tombs in the country, it was excavated in 1934 (Leask and Price 1936). Remains comprise long, subrectangular gallery, aligned WNW-ESE, divided into W main chamber (L 6.2m, Wth c. 1.7m) and small E end chamber (L c. 0.9m; Wth 1.2m); the whole is covered by three roofstones. Main chamber is 1.8m H at W and 1.2m at E end. Gallery walls are doubled and flanked on either side by massive outer-walling. Three buttress stones stand at E end of gallery. Line of low kerbstones to S of gallery, joining buttress stones at E end, encloses low remains of cairn; some remains of cairn found to N of gallery but no kerb located. West end of monument is very ruined and though original design is unclear, probable portico seems likely. On floor of end chamber were found headless skeleton of woman accompanied by burnt animal bones and bone pin; probable primary burial. Higher up were cremated human bones and some coarse pot sherds. Two inhumations, including three skulls, were found in main chamber with sherds of coarse pottery. Additional skull appeared to match female skeleton from end chamber. Evidence for other burials were found in portico area including probable cist containing inhumation and sherds of possible food vessel (11956). Three radiocarbon determinations indicate that burials could have taken place within shortest calibrated range of 2202-2138 BC (Brindley and Lanting 1991-92, 21). (de Valera and Ó Nualláin 1982, 2-4, no. 3; Ó Riordáin and Waddell 1993, 94)

The cist was found during the excavation (Leask and Price 1936, 77-101) of the portico area of the wedge tomb. 'At the western end of the monument ...we found an arrangement of slabs which appeared to form a cist' (ibid. 90). Some unburnt bones and two 'very small pieces of what appeared to be a food vessel' (ibid.) were recovered; 'unclassifiable' according to O'Ríordáin and Wadell (1993, 94). Two apparent slab sockets were noted c. 2m further N, one of which contained 'a fragment of the rim of a decorated pot' (Leask and Price 1936, 90), leading the excavators to speculate that this may have been a second cist.

The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Volume 4: North Cork' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2000).

When the site was excavated in the 1930s the eastern capstone (the smallest of the three at a mere three tons!) was quite easily slid to the east and rested on the five outer stones that are aligned to the axis of the tomb. These stones have all been set so that their top surfaces are at the same level and it may suggest that this was used as an original feature to gain access via the roof to the chamber. It was in the eastern chamber directly beneath the the eastern capstone that the headless skeleton of an adult woman was found.
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Labbacallee equinox photos by Andy B on Friday, 21 March 2014
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Heather writes: I had the opportunity to visit Labbacallee at 16.57 hours 20th March. In between all the showers, the sun decided to shine at the exact time of the equinox, and despite having only a camera phone, I got some super photos of the light filtering into the tomb in three separate beams.

The beam that interested me most was a little dot of a beam that divided the tomb in half.... the ten degree division in the 360 degree rotation. I think folk might be interested to see these photos in the equinox section of http://labbacallee.weebly.com
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Labbacallee lines? by Anonymous on Monday, 03 February 2014
Labbacallee, the early Bronze Age wedge tomb in North Cork, Ireland is aligned to the setting sun at the equinox. The point where the outer walls of the wedge meet is at a 20 degree angle.

When a dial is placed at this point and radiating lines at ten degree angles are taken, remarkable phenomena occur; these lines travel through the most important cities and towns, forts and ports, islands and lakes in Ireland. At the core, you might observe that the lines travel through many local places, but it is most strange that these lines are still travelling through important places along the coast where there is some considerable distances between the lines.

These lines are not random, they radiate from a centre at a 360 degree rotation. Places, mentioned in myth and legend associated with Labbacallee, and evidence of Bronze Age settlement and activity are found along the lines. Has anybody any idea why this occurs.
My website is http://labbacallee.weebly.com

Regards

Heather
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Re: Magnificent megaliths Introductory article from the Irish Times by Anonymous on Monday, 18 February 2013
as a local i know all the legends about labbacallee. the story tells of an evil witch who lived here with her suffering husband one day the witch was torturing him and tried to kill him he got the courage to chase her down the hill by the river with a large bone in his hands and killed her there and then also drowning her in the river and laying her to rest in the tomb
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Re: Labbacallee by davidmorgan on Sunday, 14 October 2012
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Street View -
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Re: Magnificent megaliths Introductory article from the Irish Times by marginalbear on Monday, 13 August 2012
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The use of hallucinogenic material has historically been shown to be widespread but why assume these very massive constructions came to be built by stoned hippies? These were not built overnight and they were more likely built with a definite, practical purpose by peoples as sophisticated as us, technologically adept at using wood and stone and far more capable of surviving the harsh conditions in which they lived. They may well have assumed religious significance but only along the lines that 'the Gods help those who help themselves.'
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Re: Magnificent megaliths Introductory article from the Irish Times by marginalbear on Monday, 13 August 2012
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Could I just ask why, though burial goods and bones, are found, that these sites are assumed to have been constructed as graves? The manpower needed must have been vast and however powerful a leader, it seems a waste of resources. Why not speculate that they have far more mundane origins? The first need for survival is food, and if you have gluts of fish or game that needs both cool storage and protection from wild animals, then a nice stone walled larder is of far more use to a tribe than yet another burial site. They may well have been utilised later as graves but...
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Labbacallee on Voices from the Dawn by davidmorgan on Wednesday, 08 August 2012
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On one day sometime around 2300 BCE, the Labbacallee Wedge Tomb would have presented a very grisly scene. A woman’s partially decomposed and decapitated remains, wrapped in a crude shroud, were being entombed here, in a hidden chamber only .9 m (3 ft) long. Her head was placed separately, in the large main chamber, upright on the ground and braced between two fragments of a teenage boy’s skull (see photo, below right). Could this have been a ritual purification? Was this a ceremony intended to mute her malevolent powers? Thousands of years later the tomb in local lore acquired the name Leaba Caillighe, which translates to “the Bed [or tomb] of the Witch.”2 Could there possibly be a connection between this bizarre Bronze Age decapitation burial, and the modern legends of the witch?

The Labbacallee Wedge Tomb, Ireland’s largest monument of this type, was the first megalithic tomb in the country to be described by an antiquarian writer, in John Aubrey’s manuscript of 1693 (see his sketch of the tomb in the gallery at the bottom of the page).3 Labbacallee was also the first megalithic tomb in the country to be the subject of a modern scientific archaeological excavation, by H.G. Leask in 1934.4 Its impressive dimensions, with its larger chamber the size of a domestic hut, may have been why it attracted this attention. In fact the tomb did serve as someone’s home, many centuries after it was constructed. During the excavation archaeologists discovered one of the uprights pushed aside to provide an entryway to the larger chamber, where they found deposits suggesting a domestic use during the Iron Age. In the virtual-reality environment, above left, you can use the hotspot to enter this chamber.5

The skull of a witch? When discovered, in a different burial chamber than the rest of her skeleton, the woman’s lower jaw was missing from her skull. (Leask, 1936)

The entire tomb, with its two burial chambers, is some 13 m (43 ft) long and 6 m (20 ft) wide at the larger end of its wedged shape. The front of the structure, where it is highest and widest, receives the rays of the setting sun on the equinox dates of March 22 and September 24th. Labbacallee’s western chamber, its larger one, is 6.5 m (21 ft) long. When first built the entire tomb was covered by a cairn of stones, probably some 15 m (49 ft) long and 19 m (62 ft) wide. While there is no obvious entrance to the chambers, upon its excavation archaeologists discovered that one of its three capstones, although weighing 2.7 tonnes (3 tons), could easily be slid back to rest on conveniently projecting orthostats. This, they conjectured, might have been the original means of access to both chambers of the tomb. There are three capstones in all, the largest one an impressive 7.6 m (25 ft) in length.6

In total, the remains of at least five individuals were found buried in the Labbacallee tomb, including the bones of a young woman found in a cist burial outside the monument’s ruined western end. Originally a grand ceremonial entrance to the tomb may have been located there as well, but the western end of the monument was lost when the roadway and stone wall were constructed in the nineteenth century. Only two of the orthostats at that end remain.7

When the excavators slid back the capstone and first discovered the smaller chamber of the tomb, the space was filled to the top with a packing of stones, intermixed with sherds of pottery and fragments of cremated human bone. One corner of the orthostat separating this chamber from the larger one was broken off, creating a portal from one chamber to the other. Perhaps this was used to add something to that chamber—gifts to the afterlife, or additional cremations.

Read more at: http://www.voicesfromthedawn.com/labbacallee/

Submitted by jackdaw1.
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Re: Magnificent megaliths Introductory article from the Irish Times by Anthony_Johnson on Saturday, 13 September 2008
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Thanks for posting this, and Dr Jones comments are very interesting…
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Magnificent megaliths Introductory article from the Irish Times by Andy B on Thursday, 11 September 2008
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Magnificent megaliths Introductory article from the Irish Times. I've stick this story onto Labbacallee as I like the name and perhaps we can get a new photo from someone:

Magnificent megaliths

AFTER THE DARKEST night of each year the feeble light of the rising sun shines on to a cairn of stones on the crest of Loughcrew, or Hill of the Witch, in Co Westmeath. An extraordinary feat of prehistoric architecture means the light illuminates the length of a passage hewn into the hill. As it has done for 7,000 years, this beam shines on to a flat altar stone at the back of the passage. The light strikes first on a fist-sized carving of the sun, and as the real thing rises in the east its rays pass over a series of Stone Age engravings. The spotlight moves diagonally to highlight another etching - and then, after less than an hour, the light is gone.

Welcome to the world of the megaliths - the mighty stones. These Neolithic monuments are scattered around the country, linear chambers to the dead that pay tribute to the gods of the sky, the sun, the moon and the stars. And anyone can visit.

They're a home-grown tourist attraction etched in stone, and they draw kings and queens, politicians and the occasional rock star [groan - MegP Ed]. They've got love and hatred, visionaries and heretics. There's sex and death and joy and betrayal. And it's right here in our backyard.

Although sites such as Newgrange and Tara, in Co Meath, attract thousands of visitors from all over the world, many of our megaliths aren't so famous, and in the off-peak months you stand a good chance of being the sole visitor.

Clambering inside cairns on a mountain in Co Sligo, even your breath quietens as you creep deeper into the dark.

Touch the grey layers of sandstone and limestone at a Burren passage tomb, in Co Clare, and get goosebumps as you feel the strength of an ancient race that could haul into place capstones weighing up to six tons to form stone talismans that were once the spiritual, and social, heart of their communities.

Some of the megaliths are known only to the farmers on whose fields they lie. In the Burren, Carleton Jones, an author and lecturer at NUI Galway, was told of a tomb hidden by a thicket of hazel. The archaeologist hacked away at the foliage and was so taken by what he found he spent the next five years excavating and recording. Then he returned each stone exactly as he found it, pushing the specially shaped rocks back to seal the site, just as the caretakers did thousands of years ago before they left two arrows plunged into the entrance - as a warning and a sign of strength?

The spiral patterns found inside some of these ancient stone talismans are similar to the shapes people describe when they hallucinate. Some say this shows the ancients liked to get high - possibly aided by mushrooms or opium poppies - and sit inside the chambers.

"We think they were using hallucinogens to travel to other worlds," says Dr Jones, an academic from California who was lured here by our monuments.

In his new book, Temples of Stone , he writes: "Lab experiments combined with the accounts of poets, drug-takers and shamans show that if a person is induced to hallucinate, the first hallucinations tend to be bright, pulsating geometric forms."

There's no written record or design to tell us what these Neolithic sites truly represent, but they are a powerful legacy for many visitors.

"I felt like weeping when I stood inside the passageway," says Mary Harris, a 70-year-old tourist from London, who joined a tour of megalith sites close to Dublin.

There are hundreds of megalithic sites you can check out for yourself. In his book, Jones nominates his top 100. We've come up with some examples of our own that are a worthwhile holiday destination or a pleasant day trip.

• Temples of Stone , by Carleton Jones, is published by The Colli

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