COUNTY WICKLOW, IRELAND—A lidar survey of farmland in eastern Ireland has detected multiple prehistoric monuments, according to a Live Science report. The monuments include Bronze Age structures and five Neolithic cursus monuments, which are long and narrow earthwork enclosures built some 5,500 years ago. “There’s only about 20 known cursus monuments [in Ireland] and they occur in isolation,” said James O’Driscoll of the University of Aberdeen. The largest of the newly identified structures, which were likely made with wooden shovels, is more than 1,300 feet long, he added. Four of the cursus monuments are aligned toward the rising sun of the summer solstice, so they may have helped early farmers to mark the seasons. They may also have been considered pathways for the dead, O’Driscoll explained. “While we don’t know the actual rituals that took place there, the layouts suggest that they may have been used as either processional routes for mourning or a way to move the dead on to heaven,” he said. Analysis of soil samples from the site could yield more information about what sorts of animals and plants were raised by Ireland’s early farmers, he concluded. Read the original scholarly article about this research in Antiquity. To read about Neolithic earthworks and stone structures in western Ireland, go to "Off the Grid: Rathcroghan, Ireland."
