I hope all of you had a wonderful and uplifting Winter Solstice. I celebrate both sunrise and sunset. I too watched the OPW livestream from Newgrange, the lady commentator had some very insightful observations. I ended up wishing the male commentator could hear me as he trotted out inaccuracies like calling it a burial mound. Archaeologists use that as a blanket term, but think about it.
Some ancient mounds were used for the internment of bodies and have whole skeletons placed there, like Tomb of the Eagles in Orkney. Others have whole body cremated remains often in pots buried within them. Some later Bronze and Iron Age mounds have spectacular burials like a man on a chariot with both of his horses, some have a couple, embracing, facing each other but the point is these are all burial mounds, so named because there are actual bodies in there.
Newgrange never contained bodies. What was found there was bits of cremated bone from several individuals, some of these were found on the shallow basins in the recesses. These cremated bones were not buried there permanently and it has been suggested they were taken into the mound and placed in the basins and some ritual was performed, then the bones were removed and more recent ones replaced them.
The other most repeated but wrong information (in books and online) is that the triple spiral on the orthostat near the end recess is touched by the light beam. Totally wrong because that carving does not face the passageway and could never be touched by the light beam.
What happened when it was built was that the light beam struck the back wall of the recess and this illuminated the small area with reflected light, enabling the triple spiral carving to be seen for the few minutes the light beam remained there at Solstice.
I thought the diagrams were pretty good showing how it was constructed and also the simulations of the position of the light beam now and when Newgrange was built.
I was blessed with two surprise gifts today, a 2025 Moon Diary from dd and a Simmer Pot from a fabulous friend. I couldn't wait to try it, it smells divine, rosebud bay, apple, lavender, cloves and so much more fill the house with such a festive aroma.
Sunset was spent in spirit at Maeshowe, a quiet reflective end of the day. I hope they will one day bring a Lidar survey inside the mound, because it's definitely built on an older site.