Within sight of the Neolithic axe quarries on the Langdale Pikes is a group of massive boulders at Copt Howe. The two largest command a direct view of the stone source where the sun sets into the mountainside at the midsummer solstice. Both are decorated by pecked motifs which resemble features of Irish passage tomb art. Small-scale excavation in 2018 showed that a rubble platform had been built at the foot of the main decorated surface and sealed two further motifs of similar character. New work has established an important sequence in Great Langdale. Recently obtained radiocarbon dates indicate that the main period of axe production was between 3800 and 3300 bc, whilst Irish megalithic art is later and was made between about 3300 and 2900 bc, suggesting that Copt Howe achieved its importance after axe-making had ceased or was in decline. That is consistent with an increasing emphasis on relations between northern Britain and Ireland during the Late Neolithic period. Perhaps Copt Howe itself was treated as a ‘natural’ passage tomb.

This paper examines the relationship between the use of late Irish passage tombs and the development of the British and Irish Grooved Ware complex, including its Orcadian origins. The architectural forms of these passage tombs and their associated material culture, symbolic repertoires, and depositional practices in Ireland and Orkney indicate sustained connections between people in these places. It is argued that these interactions strongly influenced the development of Grooved Ware and its associated material culture in Orkney and beyond. The results of recent dating programmes are synthesised, and the character of depositional practices from 3300 to 2700 cal bc are reassessed to highlight continuities in traditions of practice and representation. Together, these indicate that the adoption of Grooved Ware in Ireland did not herald an era of large-scale social transformation and that the primary use of late passage tombs did not suddenly cease at the end of the 4th millennium bc. Instead they continued as foci for largely unchanged forms of ceremonial activity until 2450 cal bc as part of a series of ongoing social and cultural shifts in people’s material culture and practices. It is argued that the current periodisation of the late 4th–3rd millennia bc in Ireland unduly emphasises a disjuncture between the Irish Middle and Late Neolithic. An alternative view of social and cultural change that refocuses attention on social agency is proposed.