What is recorded here

Sixty-seven shallow graves stretch northeast across a sunny Kilkenny pasture, aligning with an ancient ring-ditch and leaving a deliberate gap where its boundary breaks. Adults and children lie scattered rather than stacked, suggesting a community that marked death as a linear journey rather than a crowded pit. The cemetery emerged beside kilns and furnaces during a time when pagan and Christian Ireland overlapped, forcing locals to negotiate two worlds before burying their dead.

On a S-facing slope in pasture. Excavated in 2006-7 in advance of the N9/N10 Kilcullen to Waterford Road Improvement Scheme. Excavation licence no. 2517, AR054, Area F. One of a cluster of monuments found in close proximity to each other in an area c. 1.8ha with dates ranging from the Late Neolithic to the early medieval period. A linear inhumation cemetery aligned with the north-east curve of an Iron Age ring-ditch complex (KK031-081----). It consisted of three rows of 67 graves containing the poorly preserved remains of 43 individuals, both adults and children. The inhumations were in shallow, unlined graves oriented NE-SW. The distribution and orientation of the graves indicates that the linear cemetery respected not only the ring-ditch but also the gap in its NE quadrant. The cemetery may have been in use at a time of transition between a Pagan and Christian Ireland. The earliest radiocarbon date was Cal AD 427-561 (UB14016). This is also contemporary with kilns (KK031-088----) and metalworking furnaces (KK031-087----) in the area. Some burials remain outside the excavated area. (Channing 2009, 255-6, no. 1003; 2010a, 234, no. 881; 2010b) Compiled by: Mary Tunney Date of upload: 25 September 2013

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