Fanygalvan (Fán Uí Ghealabháin) and A Mourela Stone Circles

At the stone circle at Fanygalvan (Burren, County Clare, Ireland), 2011.

The site of Fanygalvan is an archaeological ensemble formed by a stone fort, a wedge tomb, a cist and a stone circle located in a landscape used from ancient times whitout interruption until today as summer pasturages (Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape, Aalen, Whelan and Stout, eds.); this system of short-distance transhumance is the booley or buaile, whose equivalent in the northwest of Iberian Peninsula is the alzada or transhumance to the Brañas, a placename from latin "veranea (pascua)" = summer pasturages.

The Mourela stone circle (As Pontes de García Rodríguez, A Coruña, Spain), fotographed in 1895 by the last of the galician antiquarians, Federico Maciñeira Pardo de Lama.

In the archaeological site of A Mourela, now destroyed by the construction of a motorway in 2006, there was a second stone circle, five burial mounds (medoñas), three of them with megalithic chambers inside, the floor of a VIIth century hut, maybe a shepherd's hut, and an ancient Royal Highway demarcated with white quartz stones. George Bonsor realized the great similarity betwen the Mourela stone circles and some stone circles in Ireland (1). But the galician archaeologists continue looking for the Irish stone circles which Bonsor was thinking of, without finding anything similar...; they still consider the Mourela stone circles one of a kind (Vilaseco Vázquez: "O círculo que foi. A Mourela no seu contexto histórico", pg. 52, in Círculo de engaños. Excavación del cromlech de A Mourela, Bonilla y Fábregas eds.).

(1) "En carta del 19 de mayo de 1901, desde Carmona, Sevilla, me decía el ilustre arqueólogo anglo-hispano Jorge Bonsor, entre otras cosas: "El círculo de piedra de la estación de Puentes (de que le había enviado fotografías), es muy interesante; parecido es a los cromlechs de Irlanda, y en particular de las islas Sorlingas, donde estoy haciendo excavaciones en el verano" (Federico Maciñeira, Bares. Puerto hispánico de la primitiva navegación occidental, 1947, pg. 290).

Posted for Atlantic Bronze-Iron Connections.