Cist, Kilmartin, Co. Cork

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Burial Sites

Cist, Kilmartin, Co. Cork

Beneath a field of ordinary pasture in Kilmartin, County Cork, lies a burial that was opened once, briefly, and then left alone.

Around 1920, the landowner uncovered a stone-lined cist, a small rectangular grave box constructed from upright slabs and a covering stone, a form of burial common in prehistoric Ireland. Inside were some human bones. The cist was closed up immediately, and that, apparently, was that.

The discovery was recorded by P. J. Hartnett in 1939, by which point the site had already returned to invisibility. There is no mound, no marker, no surface trace of any kind. The land simply continued to be farmed. Hartnett's brief note is almost all that exists: a landowner, a date, some bones, a closed lid. Who was buried there, and when, remains unknown. Cist burials span a considerable range of Irish prehistory, appearing from the Neolithic period through to the Bronze Age, which leaves the date of interment frustratingly open. The bones were not examined, or if they were, nothing was published.

For the curious visitor, there is genuinely nothing to see at ground level, and that absence is itself the point. The site sits in working pasture with no public monument or interpretation. What lingers is the particular quality of a place where someone made a deliberate decision to close things back up and walk away.

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Pete F
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