Burial, Carrownaglearagh, Co. Roscommon

Co. Roscommon |

Burial Sites

Burial, Carrownaglearagh, Co. Roscommon

Drainage work along a river in County Roscommon is not the most expected setting for an archaeological discovery, yet the Carrow River yielded something unsettling twice over.

In 1996, works carried out on the river just before it meets Lough Laure brought a human skull to light; the remains were acquired by the National Museum of Ireland. Two years later, in July 1998, further dredging operations recovered additional human bones, including a skull believed to belong to a female, which was likewise taken into the museum's care.

The circumstances raise more questions than the available evidence answers. Rivers and lake margins in Ireland have long been associated with the deposition of human remains, sometimes as a result of deliberate burial in or near water, sometimes reflecting the movement of bones from nearby sites through erosion or flooding. Without further excavation or dating, it is difficult to say whether these individuals were buried at the same time, by the same community, or across centuries entirely separate from one another. The proximity to Lough Laure, where a small river loses itself into open water, is geographically suggestive; transitional zones between flowing and still water held particular significance in early Irish practice, though whether that context applies here remains speculation rather than established fact.

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