What is recorded here

Françoise Henry brushed away soil on the upper northeast slope of Bailey Mór in 1946 and found a person stretched out beneath the earth. The bones lay north to south just outside a retaining wall, waiting for someone careful enough to look beyond the obvious structure. Henry left little written behind, but the discovery still belongs to the island: a life ended, buried, and half forgotten on Inis Gé Thuaidh.

On Bailey Mór mound (MA023-014003-), immediately outside and to E of a retaining wall on the upper NE slope of the mound. Françoise Henry uncovered human skeletal remains in 1946 while she was investigating the exterior of the retaining wall, but she recorded few details. A sketch plan of the burial in Henry’s excavation archive suggests that it was an extended inhumation aligned roughly N–S (Greene 2009, 142). Compiled by: Jane O’Shaughnessy Date of upload: 26 July 2023 References: 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 Unpublished PhD thesis submitted to University College Dublin.

A Neolithic burial associated with a passage tomb; significant as part of the broader Bailey Mór mound complex, indicating early ritual and funerary practices in the region.

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