Labbacallee wedge tomb

In pasture, on top of low gently sloping knoll c. 450m S of Funshion River. One of the largest wedge tombs in the country, it was excavated in 1934 (Leask and Price 1936). The remains comprise a long, subrectangular gallery, aligned WNW-ESE, divided into a W main chamber (L 6.2m, Wth c. 1.7m) and a small E end chamber (L c. 0.9m; Wth 1.2m); the whole is covered by three roofstones. The main chamber is 1.8m H at W and 1.2m at E end. Gallery walls are doubled and flanked on either side by massive outer-walling. Three buttress stones stand at the E end of the gallery. A line of low kerbstones to the S of the gallery, joining buttress stones at the E end, encloses the low remains of a cairn; some remains of a cairn were found to the N of the gallery but no kerb was located. The W end of the monument is very ruined and though the original design is unclear, a portico seems likely. On the floor of the end chamber were found the headless skeleton of a woman accompanied by burnt animal bones and a bone pin; this was probably the primary burial. Higher up were cremated human bones and some coarse pot sherds. Two inhumations, including three skulls, were found in the main chamber, with sherds of coarse pottery. An additional skull appeared to match the female skeleton from the end of the chamber. Evidence for other burials were found in the portico area including a probable cist containing inhumation and sherds of possible food vessel (CO027-169----). Three radiocarbon determinations indicate that the burials could have taken place within the shortest calibrated range of 2202-2138 BC (Brindley and Lanting 1991-92, 21). (de Valera and Ó Nualláin 1982, 2-4, no. 3; Ó Riordáin and Waddell 1993, 94).

This is a National Monument in State Guardianship (no. 318).