page_title: Poulnabrone dolmen
section_title: Excavations
hierarchical_section_title: Poulnabrone dolmen / Excavations
caption_attribution_description: English: Original photograph taken by me at Poulnabrone on the Burren, County Clare, Ireland in 2003
context_page_description: Poulnabrone dolmen is an unusually large dolmen or portal tomb located in the Burren, County Clare, Ireland. Situated on one of the most desolate and highest points of the region, it comprises three standing portal stones supporting a heavy horizontal capstone, and dates to the Neolithic period, probably between 4200 BC and 2900 BC. It the best known and most widely photographed of the approximately 172 dolmens in Ireland.
  The karst setting has been formed from limestone laid down around 350 million years ago. The dolmen was built by Neolithic farmers, who chose the location either for ritual, as a territorial marker, or as a collective burial site. What remains today is only the "stone skeleton" of the original monument; originally it would have been covered with soil, and its flagstone capped by a cairn.
  When the site was excavated in 1986 and again in 1988, around 33 human remains, including those of adults, children were found buried underneath it, along with various stone and bone objects that would have been placed with them at the time of interment. Both the human remains and the burial objects date to between 3800 BC and 3200 BC.
context_section_description: A spiral crack on the eastern portal stone was discovered by a local in 1985. As the crack was thought likely to destabilise the tomb, two phases of conservation were undertaken, both overseen by Dr. Ann Lynch, Senior Irish Government Archaeologist at the National Monuments Service. The dolmen was dismantled, and the cracked stone replaced during excavations in 1986 and 1988.
caption: The large capstone, with fallen portal stone at front
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