Burial, Móin An Fhraoigh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Burial Sites
Beneath the bogland of Móin An Fhraoigh, a few metres north of a townland boundary on the Dingle Peninsula, a grave was found, marked by a single slab, and then deliberately covered over again.
No excavation followed, no monument was erected, and the location has since returned to the ordinary appearance of the surrounding landscape. The burial is known only through local information, passed on rather than formally recorded, which gives it a quietly unresolved quality that more extensively studied sites rarely possess.
The grave was documented as part of J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, a wide-ranging project that catalogued the remarkable concentration of prehistoric and early medieval remains across the Dingle Peninsula. A slab-defined grave of this kind, where flat stones are set around or over a burial to form a simple cist or marker, is a form of interment with a long history in Ireland, appearing across periods from the Bronze Age through to the early Christian centuries. Without excavation, dating such a feature is impossible, and in this case no attempt appears to have been made to establish who was buried there or when. The decision to cover the grave back over reflects a caution, or perhaps a local respect, that is not uncommon when such finds emerge unexpectedly from bog or farmland.