What is recorded here

Half a metre deep and no wider than a child’s outstretched arms, the cist held an infant of about eighteen months, its small bones broken and scattered before the stones closed. Hencken and his Harvard team pried the capstones open in Poulawack, then rebuilt the cairn around the gap they had made. The missing west wall leans against a neighbouring grave, suggesting two cists were cut at once rather than one inserted later. Whatever family placed that child in the earth, they used the least space the dead could occupy and trusted the stones to keep it.

Situated in the E centre of Poulawack cairn (CL009-032002-). Excavated by the Third Harvard Archaeological Expedition in Ireland, under Hugh O’Neill Hencken (Hencken and Movius 1935), who subsequently restored the cairn. ‘Grave 7’ in Hencken’s (ibid., 206) schema, this small irregular cist (int. dims. 0.7m N–S; 0.4m E–W; H 0.25m) comprised an E sidestone, two small overlapping N endstones and a S endstone. The cist was covered by two capstones. Inside the cist were found disturbed and fragmentary skeletal remains of a human infant, about eighteen months old. Under the cist were found charcoal fragments, one possibly poplar (or willow) and another likely yew (ibid.). Hencken (ibid.) suggested that this cist had no W sidestone because it rested against the external packing-stones around the double cist (CL009-032017-) immediately to the W (later radiocarbon-dated to c. 2000 cal BC [Brindley and Lanting 1992, 16). Hencken proposed that the two cists were contemporary, as there was no evidence of a later disturbance in the cairn marking the insertion of this cist (CL009-032018-). Although it was not possible to acquire a radiocarbon date Brindley and Lanting (1992, 16) favoured assignment of this cist to a later general phase of mortuary activity at Poulawack cairn, in the mid-second millennium BC. This broad phase appears to have also included the ‘Grave 1’ burial (CL009-032012-), and the ‘Grave 2’ and ‘Grave 3’ cists (CL009-032013- and CL009-032014-) (Brindley and Lanting 1992, 16; Hencken and Movius 1935, 198–202, 206). The following images have been uploaded: CL009-032018-_01.jpg Photo of Graves 6 and 7 (Hencken and Movious 1935, Pl. XXI, Fig. 1) CL009-032018-_02.jpg Photo of cairn and exposed cists from SE (Hencken and Movius 1935, Pl. XX, Fig. 3) CL009-032018-_03.jpg Plan and section (from Hencken and Movius 1935, Fig. 6) Compiled by: Mary Tunney and Conn Herriott Date of upload: 19 January 2022

Cist in Poulawack is a Neolithic stone cist, dating to approximately 2500–2000 BCE. It is significant as part of a larger cairn and was studied by early 20th-century archaeological expeditions, contributing to early understandings of Neolithic burial practices in Ireland.

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