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Newgrange: quartz and granite wall
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CianMcLiam
CianMcLiam
1067 posts

Re: Newgrange: quartz and granite wall
Jul 28, 2016, 14:02
Robert's talk was very insightful and well presented. His argument is that the passage was extended in a late phase enlargement of the mound, as Eogan has already shown at Knowth. The highly carved roofbox lintel that sits a couple of metres back from the present entrance marked the place where the old passage entrance was. The massive RS3 then would have been the front capstone.

As O'Kelly noted, the roofbox and the orthostats below it seem to have been built as a free-standing structure. Since the passage is on a slope the only way the passage could be extended while allowing the winter solstice alignment to function was to create the roofbox. The larger size of the six orthostats and the fact that RS1 rests directly on top of them marks this area as different from the rest of the passage.

That's pretty much the gist of it, of course the talk touched on various important aspects of the rebuilding of the roofbox and the precision required for it to function as well as antiquarian accounts of the monument before excavation and also the question of whether the alignment was known prior to the excavation which has been the whispers locally since.

BTW, I can't seem to find your email address, was going to get in touch about something else.
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