What is recorded here

Beneath the eastern floor of a medieval house on Inis Gé Thuaidh, an extended skeleton waited for centuries before Françoise Henry revealed it in 1938. The dead person lay head-first toward the southwest, chest weighted by a quartz pebble, broken granite and a schist flake, while a second body matched that alignment just outside the wall. Greene suggests the mound served as an early Christian burial ground, turning a forgotten house corner into a quiet chamber where Atlantic wind and human memory still touch.

Within a medieval house (MA023-014008-) on Bailey Mór mound (MA023-014003-). Françoise Henry (1945, 135) uncovered this burial in 1938 during the excavation of the house. It lay beneath the floor in the E corner of the single-room house, lying parallel to the SE wall, at a stratigraphic level that predated the construction of the house. It consisted of an extended human skeleton, oriented NE–SW with the head to SW. Lying on the area of the chest were a large egg-shaped quartz pebble, a long broken piece of granite, and a small flake of schist. A burial (MA023-014027-) on the same orientation and at the same stratigraphic depth was found a few meters away immediately outside the SE wall of the house. Another burial (MA023-014026-) found within the house lay at a higher level and was on a slightly different orientation. Greene (2009, 141) has postulated that this part of the mound may have been used as a Christian burial ground during the initial phase of monastic occupation on the island. Compiled by: Jane O’Shaughnessy Date of upload: 25 July 20 References: Henry, F. 1945 Remains of the Early Christian period on Inishkea North. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquities of Ireland 75, 127-155 Greene, S. 2009 Settlement, identity and change on the Atlantic Island of North-West Co. Mayo c. AD400-1100 (2 vols.) Unpublished PhD thesis submitted to University College Dublin.

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