Cist, Calary, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Burial Sites

Cist, Calary, Co. Wicklow

Beneath an ordinary-looking stretch of grassland on a gentle north-west-facing slope at Calary in County Wicklow, a small stone-lined grave holds the cremated remains of a child.

There is nothing to see from the surface, no marker, no depression, no visible trace. The burial simply exists underground, unsignalled, in a field.

The grave is a polygonal cist, a type of prehistoric burial in which several upright stone slabs are arranged to form a small chamber, then covered with a capstone. Inside this one, excavators found an encrusted urn placed upside down, a funerary practice where the vessel, decorated with applied ridges of clay, was inverted over the cremated bones as a kind of protective cover. The remains inside belonged to a child. This form of burial, combining a cist with an inverted encrusted urn, is associated with the Bronze Age, a period when cremation rites and ceramic traditions of this kind were widespread across Ireland. The Calary find is referenced in the scholarly literature by Price in 1939, by Kavanagh in 1973, and by Waddell in 1990, suggesting it has held a quiet but persistent place in discussions of Irish prehistoric burial practice.

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