Cremation pit, Mitchelstowndown North, Co. Limerick

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Burial Sites

Cremation pit, Mitchelstowndown North, Co. Limerick

A small patch of ordinary pasture in County Limerick, lying 130 metres east of the townland boundary with Island Dromagh, contains what was once a prehistoric cremation cemetery.

Nothing marks the spot today, and the site does not appear on Ordnance Survey Ireland historic maps. It would almost certainly have remained unknown had it not been directly in the path of the Bórd Gáis Éireann Curraleigh West-Limerick gas pipeline, which brought archaeologists to this otherwise unremarkable stretch of ground.

Excavation by archaeologist Eoin Grogan revealed two distinct groups of features. The more significant was a tightly arranged cluster of seven cremation pits, all contained within an area of roughly six by five metres. Four pits formed a central core, with three outliers spaced at approximately equal distances around them. The pits were modest in scale, ranging from 38 to 58 centimetres in diameter and only 15 to 17 centimetres deep, and several had been further reduced by centuries of agricultural disturbance. Two were lined with clay deposits, and a third may originally have been lined with timber, which was itself subsequently burned. At the bottom of three pits, excavators found small sherds of coarse, undecorated pottery, placed there deliberately rather than broken in situ. Cremated bone had been deposited on top of or around these sherds. Of twelve bone samples taken, seven were positively identified as human; the remainder had been crushed so thoroughly that species identification was impossible. Some six metres away, a second group of shallow pits and linear features was found, with no associated finds, though faint traces of bone appeared in the fill of some. Grogan concluded this second group was unrelated to the cremation cemetery. The results were published in 1987.

There is nothing for a visitor to see at the surface; the site was recorded, excavated, and the pipeline laid through it. Its interest is entirely in what it represents, a prehistoric burial ground that survived, quietly and invisibly, beneath working farmland until infrastructure work happened to cross it. The location is in private pasture, and as no surface remains are visible, there is little practical reason to seek it out in person. Its value lies in the archaeological record rather than in any physical presence, a reminder that the landscape of County Limerick holds far more than it shows.

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