Pit-burial, Reardnogy More, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Burial Sites
On an east-facing slope in the uplands of north Tipperary, with a river visible below, two people were buried in pits dug into the hillside sometime in the Bronze Age.
Nothing marks the spot today, no mound, no stone, no trace at ground level, which makes it all the stranger to consider what was once placed here with evident care.
The first burial was found in a pit roughly 65 centimetres deep and 52 centimetres wide, its floor lined with a flagstone and sealed with a capstone. Alongside it lay a large prostrate pointed stone measuring 1.7 metres by 0.8 metres, which researchers have suggested may originally have been set upright as a marker above the grave. The pit contained cremated human bones, the remains of a body burned before burial, a practice common across Bronze Age Europe and widespread in Ireland during the second millennium BC. Ten metres to the west, a second pit burial was uncovered. This one was protected by three small stone slabs and held cremated remains accompanied by a bronze blade. The presence of a metal object is significant; bronze was not an everyday material in prehistoric Ireland, and its inclusion in a grave suggests the individual, or those who buried them, wished to mark the occasion with something of value. The two burials were recorded and discussed by A. T. Lucas in 1961 and by John Waddell in 1969, the latter in the context of broader research into Irish Bronze Age burial practices.