I arrived early, and this time in the off season, and finally got to go on a tour of Newgrange. It was a beautiful day (we even saw a sun dog) and I can’t recommend the tour highly enough.
Amazingly, you’re allowed to walk inside the passage tomb, all the way to the center chamber. It is the earliest example of a structure with astronomical significance– the sun shines through the narrow passage on the winter solstice.The tour guide did mention that the current wall and entrance is an “interpretation” by the professor who led the excavation and restoration. Personally, I don’t think enough attention is paid to differentiating artifact from interpretation, but I have a personal bias against significantly modifying original structures, because it disturbs the original and inevitably passes off the interpretation, to some degree, as the original.Wikipedia sums up the controversy, though it isn’t well sourced, but it encapsulates my personal concerns. Overall however, I think it’s an amazing monument and a must-see.
“As part of the restoration process the white quartzite stones and cobbles were fixed into a near vertical steel reinforced concrete wall surrounding the entrance of the mound. This restoration is controversial among the archaeological community. Critics of the wall point out that the technology did not exist when the mound was created to fix a retaining wall at this angle. Another theory is that the white quartzite stones formed a plaza on the ground at the entrance. This theory won out at nearby Knowth, where the restorers have laid the quartz stones out as an “apron” in front of the entrance to the great mound.”
On the other hand, maybe I’m being too traditionalist, and we need to see antiquties as something constantly being reinterpreted. Evidently, someone had done just that outside the tomb entrance…
