14Jones, Carleton. Temples of Stone: Exploring the Megalithic Tombs of Ireland. Cork: Collins, 2007. 160.
Jones imagines the rituals associated the passage tombs: "A liminal area is an area that is in between. In a spiritual context, a liminal area can exist between two different levels of consciousness or experience. At Loughcrew, it is likely that the people who built the tombs lived in the surrounding low- lands rather than on the hilltops alongside the tombs and that they regarded the hilltops with their cairns as a liminal area or a threshold between the land of the living and the land of the dead ancestors. It has been postulated, therefore, that rituals may have involved groups of people ascending the hills above the everyday landscape and then processing amongst the tombs and perhaps interacting with the remains of the ancestors before descending again to the familiar everyday world." (209)
Author N. L Thomas postulated his own Neolithic "Rosetta Stone" with his explanation of the megalithic art at Loughcrew and other Irish passage tombs. (Thomas, N. L. Irish Symbols of 3500 BC. Cork: Mercier, 1988. 29-30.)