Knowth Kerbstone K17
Kerbstone K17 is one of the 127 kerbstones numbered in Professor George Eogan's record of the Knowth monument. It is located on the south-eastern side of the great passage tomb mound.
Knowth Kerbstone K17
The Megalithic Art of the Passage Tombs at Knowth, Co. Meath
Description of Kerbstone 17
The upper part of the stone is damaged, with consequent loss of carvings in that area. Stage 1: straight, short lines are incised in irregular grid patterns in the middle and on the left of the stone. There are also deeply struck short straight lines, occurring in a cluster in the middle of the stone and more extensively on the lower-left; these appear to be overlaid by the picked serpentiform motif. On the right there are some dispersed pickmarks.
Stage 2 is an anti-clockwise spiral near the right of the face, which is picked with a medium-sized, rounded point. Stage 3 consists of a series of curvilinear motifs. A long serpentiform picked with a heavy, rounded point runs right across the Stone and overlies the earlier spiral. Above this on the right is a shorter serpentiform and parts of some short arcs, the upper parts of which are weathered and damaged.
Excavations at Knowth Volume 7: The Megalithic Art of the Passage Tombs at Knowth, Co. Meath
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Knowth Stone Age passage tomb
Stone K17 belongs to the kerb ring that defines the oval footprint of the Knowth passage tomb in the Boyne Valley. Inside the eastern tomb, the carved granite basin in the right-hand recess is among the finest Neolithic artefacts in Ireland. The block is so massive that the chamber appears to have been constructed around the basin rather than the reverse.
Activity at Knowth did not end with the Neolithic builders. The mound remained important through the Bronze Age and Iron Age, and was reused in medieval times, showing how long the monument kept its place in the life and memory of the Boyne Valley.
Newgrange draws the largest crowds, yet Knowth is unmatched for the quantity and variety of its sculpture, the scale of the mound and the depth of its archaeological record, with occupation traces spanning from the Stone Age into recent centuries at the ancient site of Cnogba.
The kerb carvings are abstract rather than figurative, yet they are far from random. Repeated circles, crescents and flowing lines point to a shared symbolic world among the Boyne Valley builders, one that modern visitors can still sense when walking the numbered stones around the mound.