What is recorded here

Cradockstown West holds a shallow pit no larger than a child’s bed, cut eight decimetres into the flat Kildare field. In 1969 quarrying machines tore through the sand and scattered the bones of someone who had lain east to west for centuries. The lower legs remained exposed in the pit face while the rest vanished into disturbed soil, later collected and buried again without investigation. The dead person never had a name, but the machine gave the place an ending and the field kept the shape of the loss.

In 1969, human remains were disturbed during quarrying operations in a large sandpit in a flat field. Disturbed bones together with the lower legs which had remained in the sandpit face were collected and subsequently reburied locally before they could be investigated archaeologically. Portion of a shallow burial-pit survived (dims. L 0.8m; Wth 0.6m; D 0.8m below ground surface) and, according to the finders, the body had been orientated E-W (Cahill and Sikora 2011, Vol 2, 482) Compiled by: Gearóid Conroy Date of upload: 12 July 2012

A pit-burial, likely dating to the Early Medieval period; its significance lies in the survival of lower leg bones, which may provide insights into burial practices and human remains in the region.

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