Cist, Rathmoon, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Burial Sites

Cist, Rathmoon, Co. Wicklow

In 1958, during the destruction of a burial mound on a north-south ridge at Rathmoon in County Wicklow, a small stone-lined grave was uncovered that contained the cremated remains of five people: three adult women, a newborn, and a child aged between six and eight years old.

Alongside them lay a single flint arrowhead. The group buried together in this way raises quiet questions that have no easy answers.

The grave itself was a cist, a type of burial box assembled from flat slabs and sealed with a capstone, this one measuring roughly 0.8 metres long, 0.45 metres wide, and 0.5 metres deep, oriented east to west. It sat just south of centre within its mound, positioned at the southern end of the ridge. Finds from the site were documented by Lucas in 1960, though the circumstances of the discovery, tied as they were to the mound's demolition rather than a planned excavation, mean the broader context of the burial was lost along with the monument itself. Whether the five individuals died together, or were interred over time within a shared grave, is not known. The presence of a newborn and a young child alongside adult women has prompted speculation about family groupings or community ties, but the arrowhead remains harder to interpret, possibly a grave good, possibly something else entirely.

The mound no longer survives above ground and nothing is visible at the surface today. The site endures only in the record of what was found during its undoing.

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Pete F
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