Burial, Killanena, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Burial Sites
In the parish of Killanena, in the east Clare uplands not far from the shores of Lough Derg, there is a recorded burial site that has left almost no trace in the documentary record.
It appears on the archaeological map, assigned a monument number, quietly holding its place among the ringforts and holy wells and standing stones that punctuate this part of the county, yet the details that would ordinarily accompany such a listing remain, for now, out of reach.
Killanena itself is a small rural parish whose name derives from the Irish for the church of Saint Naomhán, pointing to an early medieval ecclesiastical presence in the area. East Clare has a dense archaeology stretching back through the early Christian period and well into prehistory, and a recorded burial in such a landscape could belong to almost any era, from a Bronze Age cist burial, a stone-lined grave cut into bedrock, to a post-medieval interment associated with a long-vanished local chapel. Without further detail it is impossible to say more about what precisely was found here, by whom, or when the discovery was made.