from bone and quartz crystals, weapons and pottery. The fact that none of the skeletons was intact led to the conclusion that the site was not intended as an ongoing burial place: instead, the bodies were jumbled chronologically, rather than having been buried sequentially - although they were all found in the original strata. It was often difficult, or impossible, to distinguish the remains of each individual, or even establish their sex. Only one adult seems to have lived past 40. Many of the bones showed signs of arthritis in the upper body, and the children's teeth showed evidence of illness and malnutrition. In most cases, the pathology and physical condition of the remains indicated lives spent in hard physical labour, and a life-span that ended before the age of 30, despite the theory that these were apparently high-ranking individuals. Two of the bodies show proof of major injuries: a skull and rib cage with depressed fractures, healed before death, and an adult male hip bone, pierced by the tip of a stone projectile and not healed, which means the injury occurred not much before the time of death. The bodies had been left elsewhere to decompose - in a protected location, as none of the bones show any signs of animal teeth marks. Only the bare bones were then taken here and deposited. As some of them show scorch marks, they may have been ritually purified by fire beforehand. During the Bronze Age (c. 1750 to 1420 BC), i.e. very much later, a newborn baby was buried in the portico, just outside the entrance. Tourism and preservation The site is relatively unblemished, despite being a popular tourist attraction. A rope provides a barrier between tourists and the dolmen in order to preserve the ancient stone, and it is requested that tourists do not go beyond this barrier or touch the dolmen. A large car park was opened in 2007 by the Clare County Council to deal with traffic problems caused by cars or coaches parking in the narrow road, guided by a 2005 estimate that put the number of annual visitors at 200,000. In 2007, tension arose when Dr. Ann Lynch, the archaeologist who led the excavation of the site, requested that visitor facilities should be reduced in order to preserve "the spiritual quality of the landscape surrounding the tomb." References Notes Sources Carthy, Hugh. Burren Archaeology. Cork: The