Children's burial ground, Lackaroe, Co. Kerry

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Burial Grounds

Children’s burial ground, Lackaroe, Co. Kerry

Beneath a layer of freshly deposited earth in south-west Kerry, a cluster of small upright stones marks graves that most people living nearby know about, even if the landscape no longer shows any sign of them.

The burial ground at Lackaroe has been covered over as a result of landscaping work, yet local understanding holds that the graves themselves were not disturbed, only hidden.

The site sits within a rath, a type of enclosed farmstead typical of early medieval Ireland, usually defined by one or more earthen banks and ditches and associated with farming families of the period roughly spanning the fifth to twelfth centuries. The children's burial ground occupied the northern sector of this particular rath, its graves marked by low upright stones in the manner of many informal or unofficial burial sites found across Ireland. These are sometimes called cillíní, places where unbaptised infants or others excluded from consecrated ground were interred, quietly and without ceremony, in locations already set apart by age or association. The rath at Lackaroe may also contain a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber that was a common feature of early medieval settlements, used variously for storage, refuge, or both.

Because the burial ground has been covered by brought-in earth, there is nothing visible to seek out on the surface. What makes the place quietly significant is precisely that combination of layering: an early medieval enclosure, a long tradition of marginal burial within it, and a modern act of covering that preserved rather than erased. The archaeology is still there, out of sight.

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