What is recorded here

Cill Mhuirbhigh records a brutal Iron Age loss inside Dún Aonghasa, where a scattered adult arm and jaw fragment lay hidden beside a stone wall. The bones belonged to someone young enough to still grasp life, yet violent enough to be broken before burial. That much is fact. What is missing is the story of the hand that held the knife, the name spoken over the wound, and the reason the body was never made whole.

During the course of excavations in the SW part of Cutting 1 in the inner enclosure of Dún Aonghasa (GA110-039----), very incomplete human skeletal remains were found 2m to the S of Structure 1 (GA110-039021-) and 0.6m to the E of the enclosing wall. Only the right forearm, wrist and hand bones of an adult were found together; part of an associated scapula was found close by. A fragment of an upper jaw recovered 1.25m to the N may be part of the same individual or those of a younger person. No grave-cut was evident. A radiocarbon date of 170 cal. BC-cal. AD 60 for the forearm provided evidence of early Iron Age activity in the fort (Cotter 2012, vol. 1, 339-42; vol. 2, 276-7). (Ó Donnabháin ibid., vol. 2, 191, 196) Compiled by: Olive Alcock Date of upload: 23 June 2020

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