Burial, Laraghcon, Co. Dublin
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Burial Sites
A building site in Laraghcon, County Dublin, turned up something unexpected in September 1976: the skeletal remains of two adults, found during the digging of foundations.
There were no grave goods, no pottery, no metal objects, nothing that might anchor the burial to a particular period or culture. Just two people, interred at some point in the past, whose presence only came to light when construction machinery broke ground.
The find was recorded by the National Museum of Ireland, which routinely documents such discoveries across the country. Casual finds of human remains during building work are not unusual in Ireland, where centuries of settlement have left the ground layered with the traces of earlier populations. Without accompanying artefacts, dating a burial becomes a far more difficult exercise, typically requiring radiocarbon analysis of the bone material itself. Whether that was carried out in this case, the surviving record does not say. What the record does confirm is the bare fact: two adults, no objects, no obvious grave structure noted at the time of discovery.
Laraghcon lies in south County Dublin, and the area around it has seen considerable suburban development over the decades since this discovery was made. The site itself, being a building foundation, is long since built over. There is nothing to see at the location today, and no marker to indicate what was found there. The value of the record lies not in any visible remains but in what it tells us about the density of human activity across landscapes that can appear, on the surface, entirely ordinary. The National Museum of Ireland holds the documentation, and anyone with an interest in the find would need to consult their records directly.