Burial, An Tinbhear, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Burial Sites
In the townland of An Tinbhear in County Mayo, a burial site sits in the landscape, recorded and classified but largely unspoken for.
It appears in the archaeological register with a name and a location, yet the details that might explain who was buried there, in what form, and from what period, remain effectively out of public reach for the moment.
An Tinbhear, the Irish name meaning roughly "the estuary" or "the river mouth", points to a coastal or riverine setting, the kind of marginal ground where communities across prehistoric and early historic Ireland frequently chose to inter their dead. Burials in Mayo range across an enormous span of time, from Neolithic court tombs and Bronze Age cist burials, in which a body was placed within a stone-lined box set into the earth, through to early Christian grave plots that often grew into the parish cemeteries still in use today. Without more specific information attached to this particular site, it is not possible to say which tradition it belongs to, or whether any physical remains are still visible above ground.