Poulnabrone Dolmen
| Poll na mBrón | |
Poulnabrone
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 Shown within Ireland
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| Location | parish of Kilcorney, the Burren |
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| Region | Ireland |
| Coordinates | 53°02′56″N 9°08′24″W / 53.048842°N 9.139953°W |
| Type | Portal tomb |
| History | |
| Periods | Neolithic |
| Site notes | |
| Excavation dates | 1986, 1988 |
| Public access | Yes |
| Reference no. | 632 |
Poulnabrone dolmen (Poll na mBrón in Irish, meaning "hole of the quern stones" (bró in Irish)) is a portal tomb - one of approximately 174 in Ireland - located in the Burren, County Clare, Ireland. It dates back to the Neolithic period, probably between 4200 BC and 2900 BC. It is situated 8 km (5 miles) south of Ballyvaughan, 9.6 km (6 miles) north-west of Kilnaboy.
The tomb is located in a rocky field in the townland of Poulnabrone, parish of Kilcorney, close to the R480 road, south of Ballyvaughan in County Clare.
Poulnabrone is sometimes wrongly translated as "Hole of Sorrows" (e.g. on Google Maps). However, "brone" is derived form the Irish bró, meaning quern.
The dolmen consists of a twelve-foot, thin, slab-like, tabular capstone (horizontal) supported by two sets of slender upright (vertical) parallel portal stones, which support the capstone 1.8 m (6 ft) from the ground, creating a chamber in a 9 m (30 ft) low cairn. The cairn helped stabilize the tomb chamber, and would have been no higher during the Neolithic. The entrance faces north and is crossed by a low sill stone.
A crack was discovered in the eastern portal stone in 1985. Following the resulting collapse, the dolmen was dismantled, and the cracked stone was replaced. Excavations during that time (1986, 1988) found that 33 people, both adults and children, were buried under the monument. Personal items buried with the dead included a polished stone axe, a bone pendant, quartz crystals, weapons and pottery.
There were no intact skeletons, indicating the site was not used as a burial place in the sense that bodies were placed there immediately after or even close to the time of death. Bones were found in the original strata, but jumbled chronologically, so they were not buried sequentially. Only one of the adults seems to have lived past 40 and many of the bones showed signs of arthritis in the upper body. The children had teeth showing signs of illness and malnutrition. Two of the bodies displayed injuries: A skull and rib cage with depressed fractures, healed before death and an adult male hip bone, pierced by the tip of a stone projectile and not healed, which means the injury occurred not much before the time of death. Those selected for deposit at this site were apparently the members of some sort of elite. Their bodies were left elsewhere to decompose, in a protected location, as none of the bones show any signs of teeth marks. Only the bare bones were then taken here and deposited. As some of them show scorch marks, they may have been ritually purified by fire beforehand.
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