What is recorded here

Moneen cave in County Clare holds a small artificial niche where a starving adolescent died during the sixteenth or seventeenth century. The bones show no violence, yet the body lay cramped and broken rather than buried with honour. The skull ended up metres away, suggesting the cave itself rearranged the death or someone hid the boy in darkness.

A human skeleton was discovered in a small artificial cavity (0.6m x 0.6m x 0.85m high) in the north wall of Moneen cave (CL002-080----) in 2011 during a two-week rescue excavation (Licence no. 11E0316) following discovery by cavers. The remains represent an adolescent aged 14–16 years at the time of death. The bones bore no indication of violence yet the body was not in a formal burial position. The skull fragments initially discovered by cavers in the chamber, 2.5m outside the niche, derive from the skeleton. It is not clear how the skull became separated from the corpse. Osteoarchaeological analysis indicates that the individual had had a hard life and may have suffered extended periods of hunger and malnutrition. Radiocarbon dates obtained for the skeleton revealed a strong probability that the youth lived in the sixteenth or seventeenth century AD. A tooth yielded dates of 1436-1516 cal AD and 1596-1618 cal AD (UBA-19575) and a bone from a foot yielded dates of 1522-1573 cal AD, 1628-1667 cal AD and 1782-1797 cal AD (UBA-19933). (Dowd 2011; Dowd 2013, 9-12) Compiled by: Mary Tunney Date of upload: 17 February 2015

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