Ring Barrows resemble Saucer barrows but have a flat interior rather than a mound. Another type of barrow has a bank and a hollow interior, these are pond barrows. The barrows are often found in groups or cemeteries where a number of types can be found together. Co. Sligo or associated with ceremonial enclosures. A.D. Unlike barrows cairns are a by-product of agricultural clearance and in upland areas and on thin soils covering exposed geological formations would have been a readily available building material.
Cairns are usually of three types.
High cairns, resembling bowl barrows, which often covered passage tombs, much lower cairns of less than 2m in height with flat tops and ring cairns, which enclosed a central burial. A number of the cairns covering megalithic tombs had Bronze Age cists added to them or had the central chambers re-used for Bronze Age burial. These monuments consist of a ring of free-standing stones, uneven in number and symmetrically arranged so that one stone, the axial stone, is set directly opposite two stones, usually the tallest, marking the entrance to the circle. Characteristically, the stones reduce in height to the axial stone, which is set consistently in the south-western part of the circle. At Drombeg during the midwinter solstice, the sun appears to set at a point on the horizon in line with the axis of the stone circle.