DOWN County Museum has unveiled a new exhibition about the Megalithic tombs and stone circles of Northern Ireland. The exhibition and a booklet entitled Mega-Megaliths was created with the help of Downpatrick Young Archaeologists’ Club, who charted their visits to important sites such as the 5,000 year-old Legananny Dolmen, the Giant’s Ring Passage Tomb, Newgrange Passage Tomb and Ballynoe Stone Circle during 2010.
The Young Archaeologists Club made a special expedition last year to the passage tomb at Knockmany, County Tyrone, where they saw amazing 5000 year-old carvings similar to those found at Newgrange and Knowth in County Meath. This was followed by a visit to Beaghmore Stone Circles which is home to a circle known as ‘Dragon’s Teeth’ because it encircles over 900 stones. Another trip to Tirnony Portal Tomb or Dolmen, saw the Young Archaeologists take part in an archaeological excavation, with the help of the Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork based at Queen’s University, where they made some amazing finds such as prehistoric flints and pottery and observed some of the other finds, including a blue glass bead dating back to the time of St Patrick!
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Nearer to home the Club visited Legananny Dolmen and the nearby 1000-year-old souterrain at Finnis, where it is possible to get inside a 30m underground storage tunnel. There was another souterrain at the passage tomb at Knowth, which has the largest collection of megalithic art in the world. Inside the passage tomb at Newgrange, the guides turned off the lights to demonstrate what it is like at the winter solstice on 21 December, when the sun shines directly down the passage into the inner chamber.
Megaliths is the second major project completed by the Young Archaeologists and follows a year of visits around Strangford Lough in 2008-9 and launch of the booklet
Uncovering Strangford Lough’s Archaeology in association with the Strangford Lough Committee’s ‘Turn o’ the Tides’ project. Both the Strangford Lough and Mega-Megaliths booklets are available free from Down County Museum, and membership application forms are also available on request.
The Downpatrick Young Archaeologists’ Club has been based at Down County Museum since 2002, and has had over 250 members aged 8 to 16 over the last 9 years. The Club meets at least 10 times a year, and organises trips to archaeological and historical sites in County Down and beyond. Membership is only £15 for a year’s membership. A major visit to archaeological sites is planned for 1 July this year, for which costs and further details are available from the Museum.
The exhibition and children’s booklet have been funded by the PEACE III Programme managed by the Special EU Programmes Body and delivered by the North Down, Ards and Down Council cluster, who have also supported translations for Polish people with the help of a special link with the National Archaeological Museum in Warsaw. The Downpatrick Young Archaeologists’ Club hopes to make a link with a similar Club just outside Warsaw with the help of this Museum and launch a joint project examining forts and castles in Northern Ireland and Poland in 2011. For further details contact Down County Museum on 028 4461 5218.
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