What is recorded here

Holdstown is a buried place on high ground in County Kilkenny, now beneath the N9/N10 Kilcullen to Waterford road. In 2007, eight people emerged from its ring-ditches: five clustered together facing northeast, and three scattered wider, two of them lined with cobbles. They had been dead long before the road, laid out with care in soil that no longer remembers their names.

On high ground in a commanding position. Excavated in 2007 in advance of the N9/N10 Kilcullen to Waterford road improvement scheme (Licence no. E3681). A cluster of five inhumation burials were located within the S half of a ring-ditch (KK024-117004-). All were aligned SW-NE with their feet towards the NE. Three further inhumations were excavated within the larger feature (KK024-117001-) that enclosed several ring-ditches. Two of those (lined with cobbles) were aligned E-W and were 5.8m apart while the third was adjacent to the S edge of the enclosure and was in a poor state of preservation. (Whitty 2009; 2010, 248, no. 938) Compiled by: Mary Tunney Date of upload: 10 December 2013

A Neolithic inhumation burial cluster; dated to circa 3500–2500 BCE. Its location on high ground suggests ritual or strategic significance, typical of Neolithic funerary practices in Ireland.

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