Flat cemetery, Kilcornan, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Burial Grounds

Flat cemetery, Kilcornan, Co. Galway

On a south-facing slope in County Galway, a small Bronze Age cemetery lay completely undetected beneath the surface until workmen digging for sand accidentally broke into it.

There is nothing to see there now, no mound, no marker, no visible disturbance of the ground, which is precisely what makes it worth knowing about. This type of site is called a flat cemetery, meaning the burials were made without any covering earthwork, and their invisibility is not the result of erosion or neglect but was, in all likelihood, the original intention.

The site came to light between 1948 and 1950, during sand extraction along the line of an old abandoned roadway within the former demesne of Kilcornan House. Workers uncovered three cists, the term for small stone-lined burial boxes, all of them apparently short cists, a compact form typically just large enough to hold a crouched or cremated burial. The best-preserved of the three was slab-built, measuring roughly 66 centimetres in length and between 25 and 38 centimetres in width, aligned roughly SSE to NNW, and covered by a capstone. Inside lay the crouched skeleton of a youth alongside a vase, the kind of ceramic vessel frequently placed with Bronze Age burials. The second cist, slightly smaller at 46 centimetres across, was built in a similar way but lacked a floor slab; it held cremated bone. The third left no detailed record of its construction, but cremated bone and sherds of a vase were associated with it. Scattered finds recovered nearby included further cremated bone, a flint scraper, and the sherd of what may have been another vase. The site was documented by McCaffrey in 1952 and later referenced by Waddell in 1990.

Nothing of the cemetery remains visible on the ground today. The finds themselves are the only physical evidence that this cluster of carefully made burials ever existed, small stone boxes assembled around the dead, sealed, and then left without a trace above ground for the better part of three thousand years.

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