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| Me at Poulnabrone Portal Tomb |
After lunch, our crazy busy day continued with a very quick trip to the Poulnabrone portal tomb. I have now been to a portal, passage, and wedge tomb. I gotta find a court tomb somewhere...
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| Poulnabrone Portal Tomb |
Anyways, Poulnabrone had the remains of 22 individuals inside of it buried over the course of a few centuries. This site is unique in that there was a pretty even balance between males and females as well as adults and children. Generally, bodies in megalithic tombs are adult men. There was also a very young boy buried right outside the entrance. I believe Poulnabrone translates to something along the lines of place of sorrows. This suggests that people retained the memory of what the structure was used for after it stopped being used.
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| Poulnabrone Portal Tomb |
The bodies also revealed that people only lived to about age 30 (imagine having a mid-life crisis at 15). They also did a lot of hard labor that resulted in arthritis as well as ate a coarse diet.
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| The Limestone Pavement |
Around Poulnabrone, you could also see a lot of the Burren landscape. We had gotten so used to the rolling hills of Ireland that we hadn't really expected to see such a rocky landscape. To once again quote from my syllabus:
"The Burren and the Aran Islands are world-renowned for their unique geological and archaeological character. Burren comes form the Irish boireann or 'place of rocks.' Over much of the area the limestone bedrock has been exposed and joints in the rock have often been eroded into wide, regularly spaced fissures."
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