Man Finds Prehistoric Hilltop Tomb With 'Sun Altar' Lost for 180 Years

A prehistoric hilltop tomb that was lost for around 180 years has been rediscovered by a local man in County Kerry on the Atlantic coast of Ireland.

Folklorist Billy Mag Fhloinn uncovered the tomb's location on a hill overlooking the village of Baile an Fheirtéaraigh (also known as Ballyferriter) on the Dingle Peninsula in the southwest of the country. The peninsula, which juts out into the Atlantic Ocean, is home to a number of prehistoric remains.

The existence of a tomb close to Baile an Fheirtéaraigh was recorded in 19th-century antiquarian literature. But its exact location had been lost to history since the last known record of it, which was made in 1838, Caimin O'Brien, an archaeologist with Ireland's National Monuments Service, told Newsweek.

The tomb, known locally as the Altóir na Gréine ("the sun altar"), is also thought to have been destroyed sometime between 1838 and 1852 when its stones vanished. It is possible that they were broken and carried away to be used as building material.

A local antiquarian who visited the site in 1852 recorded that there were no remains left of the tomb, which is a type of megalith—a class of prehistoric monuments constructed using large stones—O'Brien said.

Mag Fhloinn had long been fascinated by the last record of the tomb from 1838, a sketch drawn by Lady Chatterton, an English aristocrat, traveler and author who visited the region that year. She published the sketch, which shows the monument intact, in her 1839 guidebook to the area called Rambles In The South Of Ireland During The Year 1838.

In her travelogue, she wrote the following description of the tomb alongside the sketch: "On the top of the hill were the remains of a very curious piece of antiquity, once an altar, supposed to have been used for offering sacrifices to the sun. We heartily wished we could have had an opportunity of telling the sun, before hand, of our intention of visiting his altar; for a more thick, penetrating rain I think never was experienced, than fell to our lot while poking over the remain of the old stones, and taking the sketch which is here given."

Mag Fhloinn was exploring a hill known as Cruach Mhárthain in search of the lost tomb when he noticed a number of orthostats (large upright stones) and a large capstone that turned out to be part of the monument's structure. This was surprising, given that people had assumed the whole tomb had been destroyed.

"I knew there was a lost site of Altóir na Gréine on the hill somewhere. So I started to walk the hill in search of it, covering a large area. Eventually, these stones caught my eye. Then, when I took a closer look, I saw that the features on one of the stones perfectly matched an orthostat in the sketch from 1838," Mag Fhloinn told Irish public broadcaster RTÉ, which first reported the discovery.

The folklorist informed the National Monuments Service, which dispatched O'Brien to inspect the site. The archaeologists subsequently confirmed that the remains represented the lost Altóir na Gréine tomb. It will now be added to the database of national monuments.

According to O'Brien, the monument is a type of prehistoric "wedge tomb," several of which have been previously found on the Dingle Peninsula and across the wider region.

These tombs consist of a long burial gallery, sometimes with an antechamber or small closed end-chamber. They are generally broader and higher at the front, which invariably faces in a westerly direction. They are roofed by slabs laid directly on the side walls, which often have one or more rows of outer walling.

Evidence from the small number of examples that have been excavated to date suggests that they were being built between 2,500 B.C. and 2,000 B.C., representing the last phase of megalithic tomb construction in Ireland, O'Brien said.

No excavation has been carried out at Altóir na Gréine. But both cremated and unburnt human remains have been found at other wedge tombs in Ireland.

"[These tombs] are usually positioned on high ground, but not the highest point. There's often certain alignments associated with them. Quite often the opening tends to look towards the west, or the south, or the southwest," Mag Fhloinn told RTÉ.

"Usually you will find cremated remains of people inside and they probably represent the burial place of a significant family or community group. But they could have been used for other things as well, ceremonies and rituals for example. They may have cosmological and astronomical significance in the case where they are facing the setting sun in the west and southwest."

The rediscovery of the hilltop site means archaeologists will now be able to study the tomb and compare it to others, which may provide better insights into the prehistoric peoples of this region who built such monuments.

"The monument siting has extensive views of the sea to the west and would have provided the tomb builders with a panoramic view of the sun setting into the sea. [This] may have been one of the reasons why they chose this siting for the burial tomb," O'Brien said.

Given the local name of the tomb and its apparent northwest/southeast orientation, archaeologists will be keen to find out if the monument is aligned with the sun in any way. A 1938 manuscript preserved in the Irish Folklore Collection contains lore describing the "eastern sun hitting the tomb at sunrise"—a possible indication of a winter solstice alignment.

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