What is recorded here

Half a meter down on a gentle slope, a young person lies curled on their left side, head pointing north, buried without a single object to mark them. Centuries of ploughing scarred the shallow grave until a road project exposed the bones in 2004, yet even then the deposit refused a clear date. Wheat grain trapped in the soil suggested Roman times, while charcoal from a cutting pit whispered of the Bronze Age, leaving the true moment of death suspended between eras. The boy or girl entered the earth bare-handed, trusting the dark soil rather than brass or beaker to remember them.

Located on a gentle SW-facing slope, with a small NNW-SSE stream c. 200m to the SW. Archaeological excavation (03E1252) by R. Clutterbuck between January and May 2004 at Site 25 in advance of the N2 Finglas – Ashbourne road and by-pass excavated (excavations.ie 2004:1211) a crouched inhumation amongst other scattered prehistoric features. A shallow grave-cut (dims 0.85m x 0.65m; D 0.06m) had been badly damaged by ploughing and was cut by a pit (dims 0.47m x 0.23m; D 0.15m) that contained a flint flake and blade and two joining sherds of coarse Beaker pottery. The grave retained some of the remains of an adolescent or young adult lying on their left side in a crouched position with the head at N, but there were no grave goods directly associated with it. Nor was it possible to derive a radiocarbon date from the remains but a sample of wheat grain from the fill of the grave yielded a date of 0-130 cal. AD (Wk-18213), testifying to the disturbed nature of the deposit, while a charcoal sample from the truncating pit produced a more reliable if wide date of 2900-2250 cal. BC (Wk-17938). (Clutterbuck 2009, vol. 1, 15-17) See the attached images from Clutterbuck (2009, vol. 1, 9, 17) ME039-009_2 Annotated site plan; ME039-009001-_1 Burial; Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 5 May 2022

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