Webinar 3: ‘The Portal Tombs at Killaclohane’- Dr Michael Connolly

Lecture 3 of ‘The Webinar Series’

Kerry Archaeological and Historical Society

Date: 24^th September 2020 at 7:30pm

 Dr. Michael Connolly (County Archaeologist)

 Presents

 ‘The Portal Tombs at Killaclohane &

the late Mesolithic/early Neolithic Transition in Kerry’

 ‘The area to the north-east of the village of Milltown in mid-Kerry is the location for three closely associated portal tombs in the townlands of Killaclohane and Brackhill. The two tombs in Killaclohane townland (Killaclohane I & II) were excavated over three seasons between 2015 and 2018. Subsequent analysis of the findings has shown the tombs to be early and to have had long histories of use and reuse both for burial and as culturally important features in the landscape.

Killaclohane I is the earliest, extant structure in Kerry while the tombs are also the earliest identified burial monuments. The tombs were built at the very beginning of the significant transition from a nomadic, hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a more settled existence based around agriculture and offer a rare glimpse of life, death and the increasing importance of a connection to the land and to the ancestors from the beginning of the Neolithic to the late Bronze Age’.