What is recorded here

Kilmainham is a small Early Bronze Age village on a knoll in County Meath, where two pits marked a life-and-death boundary around 1700 BC. The northern pit held burnt bone beside a hearth, suggesting a person was cooked or burned before being buried with wheat, barley and alder charcoal. The southern pit kept a large decorated urn whose lozenge pattern may have belonged to one family or one remembered person. Together they reveal a place where cooking, farming and burial shared the same ground.

Three hut-sites, a stone platform or cairn, some pit-burials and burnt mound 2 can be dated to the Early Bronze Age (2500-1700 BC). Two pits 14m apart are located in a N-S line just off the W crest of the knoll that is W of the S-N spur. The N pit (diam. 0.45-0.5m; D 0.22m) had a fill of black silty sand with burnt bone and there was a hearth (diam. 0.8-0.9m; D 0.22m) just beside it. Charred remains of alder, wheat and barley were also present in the pit, but the remains were those of an adult and a fragment of a femur provided a C14 date of 1885-1749 cal. BC (UBA 12909). (Walsh 2011, vol. 1, 92-3) The S pit (diam. 1.7-1.8m; D 0.45m) contained the upper portion of a large cordoned urn (rim diam. 0.25m) with a high neck defined by applied cordons. The upper neck was decorated with a panel of broad lozenges half filled with oblique lines on one side of a vertical line, with pairs of horizontal lines above and below. Stylistically it is unique, and perhaps personalised, but very little burnt bone was present. The urn is dated on stylistic grounds to c. 1700 BC. (Walsh 2011, vol. 1, 97) True location: ITM (675539, 774109) See the attached plans adapted from Walsh 2011 (figs 5,6) ME017-087_1 Site plan; ME017-087_2 Contour plan; ME017-087_6 Location; Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 21 March 2022

Pit-burial in Kilmainham is an Early Bronze Age (2500-1700 BC) funerary feature, associated with a broader ritual and domestic landscape. Its alignment and location suggest possible ceremonial or social significance within a local Bronze Age settlement complex.

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