Cist, Derryglash, Co. Longford

The field was once bogland, gradually reclaimed for pasture, and it was only in 1995 that the ground gave up something it had kept for a very long time: a stone-lined grave, carefully built, and holding the fragmentary remains of a person long forgotten.

A cist is a type of box-like burial chamber constructed from stone slabs, typically dating to the Bronze Age in Ireland, used to contain the remains of one or more individuals. The Derryglash example is a rectangular cist, aligned roughly north to south, measuring approximately 1.75 metres along that axis and 0.85 metres wide. Its southern and western walls were formed from large upright stone slabs, their tops sealed under a layer of peaty soil. The northern and eastern sides had deteriorated, with evidence suggesting they were built partly in drystone fashion, where stones are stacked without mortar, and some horizontal slabs on the eastern side may have been part of the original construction. A large roofstone had once covered the whole structure, but it had broken into several pieces, one of which had fallen inward. The floor itself was laid partly with flat stones. What the excavators recovered from inside was sparse but significant: two human bones, identified as an ulna and a rib, along with what appeared to be charred wood, suggesting cremation or some other funerary use of fire may have been part of the burial ritual. After investigation, the cist was infilled, and today there is nothing to mark it at the surface.