Burial, Inis Gé Thuaidh, Co. Mayo

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Burial Sites

Burial, Inis Gé Thuaidh, Co. Mayo

On a raised terrace near the summit of the Bailey Mór mound on Inis Gé Thuaidh, a small island off the coast of Mayo, a skeleton was found folded so tightly upon itself that the excavator described it as having been "literally rolled into a ball.

" That phrase comes not from a published report but from a private diary, which is the only detailed record that exists of this burial. The excavation was never formally written up, and so this individual, interred just 2.75 metres from the doorway of a nearby stone house with no surface marker to indicate their presence, has remained largely unknown outside specialist circles.

The dig was carried out in 1946 by Françoise Henry, the French art historian and archaeologist whose work on early Irish Christian art and island monasticism made her a significant figure in the field. That she excavated here at all is not surprising, given her sustained interest in the archaeology of Ireland's western islands, but the absence of a published account means the burial sits in an awkward limbo, documented but not formally interpreted. Its date remains unknown. What makes it particularly curious is its posture: a crouched inhumation, where the body is drawn up with knees near the chest, is a burial style associated with various periods of Irish prehistory, though it was also occasionally used in early medieval contexts. The other burials identified on this part of the Bailey Mór mound were laid out in the extended position typical of Christian burial practice, which throws this one into sharper relief. Whether it predates the others, or represents a different tradition operating alongside them, is a question the unpublished diary cannot fully answer.

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