Cist, Ballyeeskeen, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Burial Sites
Beneath an ordinary stretch of road at Ballyeeskeen in County Sligo, the bones of the prehistoric dead were disturbed by the most mundane of modern activities: resurfacing work.
The find was a cist grave, a small stone-lined box burial typical of the Bronze Age, in which a body or cremated remains were placed before the stones were sealed and the ground closed over them. The discovery left no permanent mark on the landscape, and today nothing is visible at ground level to indicate that anyone was ever interred there.
The circumstances of the find are frustratingly vague. No date is recorded, and the source is simply a topographical file entry noting that bones were uncovered during the road repairs. What sharpens the picture slightly is the knowledge that a second cist grave was found approximately one hundred metres to the south-east, turned up this time by a plough rather than a road crew. Two such burials in close proximity suggest this corner of Sligo may once have held a small prehistoric burial ground or cemetery cluster, the kind of modest funerary landscape that dotted Ireland during the Bronze Age and has since been swallowed by millennia of agricultural use.