Flat cemetery in Carmanhall — Report the wrong picture

What is recorded here

Five centuries before Christ, Carmanhall leaned over a wide stream where one townland ended and another began. People cut shallow pits into flat earth, placed cremated bones inside vase urns, and left one set of remains in a stone-lined circle without a vessel at all. They chose a steep drop beside weathered granite, as if death should face the water and the sky should stay clear above it.

A group of pit burials excavated under licence 01E1229. The land was flat to the north and east but on the south-western side sloped steeply downward to a wide stream in a mixed wooded area. The stream marked the boundary between Carmanhall and Murphystown townlands. An area measuring 40m on its SW and NE sides, 15m on its SE side and 10m on its NW side was topsoil-stripped. Burial 1 contained a single vessel, and Burial 2 two vessels. Burial 3 did not contain any vessel; the cremated remains were placed in a stone-lined circular pit. The pits were found in the S area of the site, within 7m of each other and close to an area of weathered granite bedrock that may have been exposed at the time of interment. The vessels were identifeid as two vase urns and a vase dated to between 2000BC and 1850BC (O'Reilly 2004, 130) Compiled by: Geraldine Stout and Padraig Clancy Revised upload on: 28 July 2018

A Neolithic pit burial cemetery; dates to the 4th–3rd millennia BCE. Its location near a stream suggests ritual or strategic significance, typical of Neolithic settlement and burial practices in lowland areas.

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