What is recorded here

Thirty shallow pits pierced the south slope of Camlin Hill, holding cremated bones and charcoal before a thick layer of reddish-brown sand buried the first deaths. The cemetery recorded two waves of human loss, with later urns and pits cutting through the sand to honour new dead above the old. What looks like a flat mark on the hill was actually a crowded chamber of remembering, where fire, soil and time kept company.

Located on a slight SW-facing slope on the S-facing slope of Camlin Hill. Centre-line testing (E4067) in advance of the N25 New Ross by-pass identified a flat cemetery (Doyle et al. 2010, 33-4) in a concentrated area (dims. c. 10m NW-SE; c. 7m NE-SW) that had about 30 pits (diam. 0.28-0.35m), some of the pits lying outside the core. The cemetery was completely excavated (E4101) as Camlin 4, when two major phases of activity were identified. The first consisted of three cremation burials, two post-holes and a stake-hole that pre-dated the second phase when a layer of reddish-brown silty sand (dims c. 14m NE-SW; c. 11m NW-SE) was introduced. The third phase was represented by 35 cremation burials and an inverted urn burial that were inserted into or through the introduced layer. A larger oval pit (dims 1.2m x 0.8m; D 0.22m) from this phase contained flecks of charcoal and cremated bone. Five pits, a post-hole and a small spread with charcoal flecks were outside the deliberately-laid layer and might belong to either phase. The cremation burials were in shallow pits (diam. c . 0.3-0.5m; D 0.1-0.4m) filled with silty clays that had charcoal inclusions but many of the pits had no visible cremated bone and many had only token amounts. (Hackett 2010, 8-13; Hackett 2013) Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload; 24 September, 2013

Flat cemetery, likely medieval in date, associated with a historic settlement on Camlin Hill. Its significance lies in providing insights into local burial practices and community structure in the medieval period.

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