What is recorded here

Poulawack’s Grave 3 held a young woman in a narrow stone box during the mid-second millennium BC, tucked beside another cist inside a deep pit cut through the cairn. Hencken’s team exposed the chamber, photographed its cramped geometry, and restored the mound above the dead. The woman faced east in darkness while the living built memory around her, proving that even a small Clare field could preserve the shape of forgotten grief.

Situated in the upper centre of Poulawack cairn (CL009-032002-). Excavated by the Third Harvard Archaeological Expedition in Ireland, under Hugh O’Neill Hencken (Hencken and Movius 1935), who subsequently restored the cairn. ‘Grave 3’ in Hencken’s schema, this irregular subrectangular cist (int. dims. 0.9m N–S; 0.5m E–W; H 0.4m) comprised one W and two E sidestones set on their long edges, and five capstones laid transversely. Three irregular slabs made up the cist floor, on which were found disturbed and fragmentary human skeletal remains, probably of a young adult female placed in a contracted position on its right side facing E (Hencken and Movius 1935, 201). Together with an adjacent cist (CL009-032013-) located c. 1.5m to the S, this cist was constructed within a suboval pit (c. 6.5m N–S; c. 4m E–W; D c. 1.8m) dug into the top of the cairn (ibid., 199). This cist 'Grave 3' (CL009-032014-) was radiocarbon-dated to between c. 1610 cal BC and c. 1432 cal BC (Brindley and Lanting 1992, 16). This falls within the final broad phase of mortuary activity at Poulawack cairn, during the mid-second millennium BC, when the burial 'Grave 1' (CL009-032012-) was also added, and possibly also 'Grave 7', a cist (CL009-0032018-) (ibid.) although the evidence for the Grave 7 date is equivocal. The following images have been uploaded: CL099-032014-_01.jpg Photograph of exposed cists (Hencken and Movius 1935, Pl. XX, Fig. 3) CL009-032014-_02.jpg Cist plan and section (Hencken and Movius 1935, Fig. 5) Compiled by: Mary Tunney and Conn Herriott Date of upload: 12 January 2022

Cist in Poulawack is a Bronze Age stone cist, located within a cairn, and is significant as part of a burial complex studied during early 20th-century archaeological expeditions in Ireland.

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