Located near the coast in North Mayo, 10 kilomentres from Killala, the Ceide Fields is the most extensive Stone Age monument in the world, consisting of field systems, dwelling areas and megalithic tombs from 5000 years ago.
The Ceide Fields visitors centre is an impressive heritage centre and is primarily concerned with the archaeology of this area and profits from it are use to provide continuing research, involving the location and mapping of these hidden walls by a specially developed simple and completely non-destructive method of probing with iron rods, and excavation of habitation sites and tombs is yielding a unique picture of the way of life of our ancestors 200 generations ago.
We now know that they were a highly organized large, peaceful community of farmers who worked together on clearing hundreds of acres of forestry and dividing the land into regular field systems.
Their main economy was cattle rearing but they were skilled craftspeople and builders in both wood and stone and also had strong spiritual beliefs.
