Cist, Mountpleasant, Co. Mayo

Co. Mayo |

Burial Sites

Cist, Mountpleasant, Co. Mayo

In rough pasture near Mountpleasant, with a lake visible to the west, a man was buried so close to the surface that the capstone of his grave sat only twenty centimetres below the turf.

He was laid out fully extended, his head resting on a flagstone, inside a long cist, a type of stone-lined burial box, measuring just 1.3 metres in length, 0.7 metres wide, and 0.6 metres deep. The construction mixed cut stone slabs with dry-stone walling packed behind them, a practical combination that gave the grave its shape and solidity. That a person could lie almost within reach of a farmer's spade for what may have been thousands of years, in an ordinary field beside an ordinary lake, gives the site a quietly unsettling quality.

When the grave was investigated, it yielded the skeletal remains of an adult male alongside a flint scraper and some animal bones, all of which passed into the collections of the National Museum of Ireland. The flint scraper, a small tool worked from flint to produce a sharp, curved edge used for cleaning hides or working wood, places this burial broadly within a prehistoric context, though the notes do not specify a precise date. Extended inhumation in a cist, rather than cremation or crouched burial, is a rite associated with various periods in Irish prehistory, and the presence of animal bones alongside the deceased suggests some form of grave goods or food offering, a detail that slightly complicates the otherwise spare picture. The site was documented as part of an archaeological survey of the Ballinrobe district, compiled by D. Lavelle and published in 1994 under the auspices of the Lough Mask and Lough Carra Tourist Development Association.

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Pete F
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