What is recorded here

Castleblunden holds a tiny cremation pit cut into yellow glacial clay, revealing that human fire and loss belong even in flat, featureless ground. The crushed bone mixed with charcoal suggests someone gathered what remained of a body and gave it back to the earth without a chamber, monument or marker. A gas pipeline brought the pit back into notice, but the act itself is older than roads, pipes or memory.

In a flat plain stretching E of the Slieve Ardagh Hills to Kilkenny City (4km to the NE) and the Nore valley, 38m S of the source of the Stony Stream. Uncovered during archaeological monitoring (licence no. 99E0756) of a Bord Gáis Éireann gas pipeline development (Stevens 2000, 139). A single cremation pit was found cut into the underlying yellow, glacial boulder clay (ibid.). It was a small, partially truncated, circular pit (diam. 0.5m; D 0.1m), with a concave profile (ibid.). The pit contained a uniform charcoal-rich fill with occasional pebbles and small stones, with 40% of the deposit composed of crushed cremated human bone, measuring 5-20mm in diameter, distributed throughout the fill but with concentrations to the middle and sides (ibid.). Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 19 October 2020

Pit-burial in Castleblunden is a prehistoric burial, likely dating to the Neolithic or Early Bronze Age. Its location in a lowland agricultural area suggests it may be part of a broader pattern of early settlement and funerary practices in the Kilkenny region.

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