Knowth Kerbstone K57
Kerbstone K57 is one of the 127 kerbstones numbered in Professor George Eogan's record of the Knowth monument. It is located on the south-western side of the great passage tomb mound.
Knowth Kerbstone K57 - Photo by Ken Williams from Excavations at Knowth Volume 7.
The Megalithic Art of the Passage Tombs at Knowth, Co. Meath
Description of Kerbstone 57
The carving on the main face of the stone runs across a number of cracks and changes of the surface levels. The main motifs are two horizontal serpentiform motifs picked with a heavy point. To the lower-left, a small, irregular serpentiform or meander is picked with a finer, medium-sized point. Some dispersed pickmarks are also present.
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 K57 belongs to the kerb ring that defines the oval footprint of the Knowth passage tomb in the Boyne Valley. Carvings on the end stone of the eastern passage have been interpreted as a schematic map of the moon's surface, among the earliest attempts anywhere to record the appearance of the lunar maria. Other motifs on the site may relate to eclipses and to the interplay of sun and moon in Neolithic reckoning.
Iron Age people buried their dead near the mound and built a substantial ring-fort settlement beside it, reusing a site that already carried great prestige. Later medieval farmers enclosed the summit within a grange, leaving traces still visible from the air.
The eastern passage runs for about forty metres, the longest known megalithic passage in western Europe. It opens eastward into a cruciform chamber with three recesses and a corbelled stone roof of the kind also seen at Newgrange (eastern tomb at Knowth).
Twin passages at Knowth face broadly east and west. Older ideas that they targeted equinox sunrises and sunsets have given way to wider interpretations that allow both solar and lunar observation, and perhaps calendrical counting, among the motives of the builders.