Burial, Crossursa, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Burial Sites
In the undulating grassland of Crossursa in County Galway, three people are buried for the second time.
There is nothing to see at the spot now, no marker, no depression, no trace of any kind above ground. That absence is, in its own way, the most interesting thing about it.
Around 1947, workers from Galway County Council were digging for sand in a low mound on a slight rise in the landscape. The mound was modest, roughly six metres across and no more than thirty centimetres high, the kind of subtle earthwork that generations of farmers and travellers might pass without registering. When the digging broke into it, three human skeletons came to light. Low, rounded burial mounds of this type are a familiar feature of the Irish countryside, often dating to the Bronze Age or early medieval period, though without excavation records it is impossible to say when these individuals lived or who they were. The landowner, who relayed the account, reported that the skeletons were reburied somewhere nearby, and the council work presumably continued. No formal archaeological investigation followed.