Who What How When Where Why Pots & Basins Quartz Art   Tour Guide Sacred Island Carrowkeel Summer solstice Doonaveeragh Village Caves of Kesh Kesh Cairn Knocknarea Carrowmore Cairns Hill Moytura

Carrowkeel Ware & Basin Stones There are several types of artifacts which are associated with chambered cairns. Of the few items that are found in these monuments which can be said to date to the builders, the most common are fragments of ancient pottery. On a few occasions complete pots were recovered, and since these were first found in the Bricklieves, these are known as Carrowkeel Ware. The example illustrated above is the Barnarashy Vessel from near Carrowmore, and is found on the old Irish 4p and 5p stamps. The vessels were made from coarse, gritty clay sometimes mixed with broken shells and always decorated with grooved and pitted designs which complement the engraved artwork of the cairns. This Carrowkeel Ware is associated with cremation and burial as great quantities of ashes are found buried under the passages, chambers and recesses of these monuments. In Celtic folklore and mythology cairns were sometimes raised over the bodies of slain warriors, but never mention cremation, which is obviously a very early form of burial. The cairns are called Passage Tombs because so many cremated remains were excavated within them. However given detailed study it is clear that these monuments were in fact the oldest churches and cathedrals in Europe, and were probably used much as modern temples are today. Rituals such as birth ceremonies; communions; marriages; ordinations; prayer, meditation and contemplation; initiations and finally death would have taken place within the chamber. The Carrowkeel pots may have been funerary urns or prehistoric chalices. The Essenes of Quamram had a ritual of passing the cup which was adopted by the early Christian Church; it is quite likely that this was descended, as so many other Christian symbols are, from prehistoric Ireland. As the culture developed the cairns got bigger in size. At Carrowkeel stone trays were described in the recesses of Cairns G and K. Several stone basins were found at Loughcrew, including the large example in Cairn L. The Boyne Valley chambers all have large basins, one smashed in Dowth South, four in Newgrange and two at the main site of Knowth, the finest of them all being the beautiful engraved basin in the Eastern chamber illustrated here. The whole massive cairn was constructed around this basin, which may well be the Dagda's Cauldron, one of the four treasures brought to Ireland by the Túatha Dé Danann. This spot was an important setting out position for many of the monuments in the Boyne Valley, as 10 minutes experimenting with a drawing compass and plan of the monuments will prove.