ABSTRACT
A new stage, the Late Neolithic, is discernible in the centuries immediately before 2000 B.c. It is marked by the appearance of a new set of flint tools and a variety of novel pottery forms and decorative devices, some of which, like the predominant cord ornament, can be traced to the Baltic lands. At this time, two new burial modes became fashionable: the inhumation of single males, accompanied by elaborate hanging vessels and new personal ornaments, in small stone chambers (cists) under round tumuli, and a single-chambered megalithic tomb, the Portal Dolmen, which was roofed with a massive capstone and set, like the Court Cairns of the Neolithic A tradition, at the east end of a long cairn. The bearers of both these burial modes exploited fresh territories, travelling south along the axis of the Irish Sea, the Portal Dolmens being found in Leinster, Waterford and Cork as well as in Anglesey, Merioneth, Pembroke, Cornwall and Dorset, and the Single Burials being found chiefly in Leinster, particularly in the area west of the Wicklow Mountains. River-valleys and glacial sands and gravels were the chosen environment of the builders of both Portal Dolmens and Single Burial mounds in Leinster.
