Cist, Ballyeeskeen, Co. Sligo
Co. Sligo |
Burial Sites
Beneath a pasture field on an east-west ridge in Ballyeeskeen, Co. Sligo, there is a prehistoric grave that most people walking past it would never suspect.
A cist, which is a small stone-lined box burial of the kind commonly used in Ireland during the Bronze Age, was turned up here by a plough at an undetermined point in the past. It contained human bones. Once the find was recorded, the grave was closed back up, and the land returned to looking like ordinary farmland. There is nothing to see at ground level today.
What makes the spot quietly worth noting is partly the manner of its rediscovery, which is a common enough story in Irish archaeology: ancient burials emerging not through excavation but through the routine work of farming. The ridge setting, aligned east to west, would have been a deliberate choice by whoever interred the dead here, high ground being a recurring feature of prehistoric burial placement across Ireland. A second cist was identified approximately one hundred metres to the north-west, suggesting this area of Ballyeeskeen held some significance in the funerary landscape of its time, though the precise period and the identities of those buried remain unknown.