Situated on the southeast border of the Sperrin Mountains, 8.5 miles northwest of Cookstown in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland, lies the complex of early Bronze Age megalithic monuments, stone circles, and cairns known as Beaghmore. The name, which represents the fact that the region was a woodland before being removed by Neolithic farmers, is thought to have come from Irish a Bheitheach Mhór, which means Big Place of Birch Trees. Carbon dating has been used to date hearths and flint tool deposits found at this site between 2900 and 2600 BC. There are multiple stone rows that cross the collapsed walls of Neolithic field constructions. There are twelve cairns, ten stone rows, and seven low stone circles of varying sizes, six of which are paired. The circles, which have a diameter of ten to twenty meters, are connected to past burial cairns, and stone row alignments point in their direction. The deformed rings and small size of the stones—few above 0.5 meters tall—indicate that they may be connected to the kerbs that encircle some megalithic tombs. The high and low arrangement of the stone rows, with short rows of tall stones running beside much longer rows of little stones, is a common feature. From the rings, the stone rows extend in an approximately northeastern direction. It is believed that the stones may have been raised in reaction to declining soil fertility and the intrusion of peat. Excavation has revealed that the site overlooks a Neolithic agriculture site. [Information and Image Credit : Beaghmore, Wikipedia] [Wikipedia-Link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaghmore ] [Image : A stone circle at Beaghmore; Wikipedia-Image Author : Wax0nightmare] [Image Availed Under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International License; (Please Relate to Individual Image URLs for More Usage Property and Sharing, Remixing or Attributing the Work)] [License-Link : https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en ] [Wikipedia-Image-Source-Link : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_stone_circle_at_Beaghmore..jpg ] #History#Architecture
Heritage and Geographical Sites
