Cist, Carrickanass, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Burial Sites

Cist, Carrickanass, Co. Mayo

At Carrickanass in County Mayo, there is a recorded prehistoric cist, one of thousands of such burial features scattered across the Irish landscape, most of them quietly overlooked.

A cist is a small stone-lined grave, typically box-shaped, constructed from flat slabs and used during the Bronze Age to inter the dead, often in a crouched position and sometimes accompanied by a ceramic vessel known as a food vessel or beaker. They turn up in fields, under cairns, and occasionally during construction works, brief interruptions to ordinary life that open a window onto funerary practice from roughly four thousand years ago.

Beyond its classification and location, the details of this particular cist remain sparse. What is known is that it has been formally recorded as an archaeological monument in County Mayo, a county with no shortage of prehistoric remains, from megalithic tombs on exposed hillsides to burial mounds in low-lying farmland. Cists of this kind were sometimes discovered by chance, during ploughing or drainage, and their contents, if any survived, could include human bone, cremated remains, or finely made pottery. Without further excavation records or fieldwork notes attached to this site, the specifics of its discovery, condition, and contents are not available.

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