Cist, Cill Éinne, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Burial Sites

Cist, Cill Éinne, Co. Galway

Beneath the sandy ground of Inis Mór, in a sheltered hollow about 130 metres north-west of Teaghlach Éinne, lie the undisturbed remains of five people, their grave leaving no mark whatsoever on the surface above.

The only reason we know they are there at all is that a cattle-grid was being installed in 1984, and the machinery cut into something older and altogether more significant.

What emerged was a long stone cist, a type of burial in which a roughly coffin-shaped box is formed from flat slabs set on edge, then sealed with capstones on top. This particular example had been cut down into the sand rather than built up from it, which may explain why only one sidestone was recorded; the others had perhaps shifted or collapsed over the centuries. Five covering slabs were noted, and the cist was oriented east to west, an alignment commonly associated with early Christian burial practice. Inside were the skeletal remains of four adults and a child. The proximity of a known burial area roughly 50 metres to the north-east raises the possibility that this cist was not an isolated grave but an outlier of a larger, earlier cemetery, one perhaps connected in some way to Teaghlach Éinne, the early ecclesiastical enclosure that gives the immediate area much of its archaeological weight.

There is nothing to see at ground level today. The site was not formally preserved or marked following its discovery, and the sand that once covered these individuals has long since been disturbed and resettled. The significance of the find lies entirely in what it suggests about the density of burial activity around one of Inis Mór's most important early Christian sites, and in the almost accidental nature of its discovery.

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