What is recorded here

Muskerry By. is a place where fire and burial touch. A burnt pit held the scattered bones of an older man, moved perhaps from another grave nearby. The pit itself may have marked a loss, a boundary, or a warning. To build houses above it is not to erase that man, but to stop listening to the place where he was kept.

A small quantity of disarticulated skeletal remains of an adult male, probably over 45 years old at the time of death, was found in the NW quadrant of a burnt pit (CO073-147002-) that was excavated in advance of a housing development in 2003 (Ní Loingsigh 2006, 62-3). The bone, which was all from the upper part of the body, was in two deposits, c. 0.3m apart, and the pit was filled with soil containing charcoal and some limestone. The excavator concluded that the human remains appeared to have been redeposited in the pit, possibly after they were disturbed from their original place of interment, perhaps in the surrounding vicinity (ibid.). An analysis of the dentition suggests that this individual may have lived in the medieval period, if not earlier (ibid.). A slab-lined burial (CO085-131----) was discovered in the 1920s c. 700m to the SSW. Eighteen pits (CO073-147----) and another burnt pit (CO073-147001-) were also excavated in advance of the development (ibid.). (Ní Loingsigh 2003) The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Volume 5' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2009). Date of upload: 22 December 2009

A Neolithic burnt offering pit burial; significant for providing human remains and contextual evidence of ritual deposition practices in early agricultural communities.

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