What is recorded here

Not shown is a flat cemetery in County Limerick where seven small cremation pits held human bone and occasional pottery before a housing scheme uncovered them. The smallest pits measured about fifty centimetres across and contained remains from three different burial phases, including one marked by a circle of ten stake-holes. What is missing is not the fact of death but the name of the dead, the time they were burned, and the reason this quiet slope was chosen to keep them.

On a gentle SSW-facing slope, in pasture, on the N side of Schoolhouse Road, Castletroy. Not depicted on OS historic mapping. Identified by Flor Hurley in 2003 during monitoring (License No. 03E1382) for a housing scheme known as Glantan and excavated (License No. 03E1717) by Niamh O’Callaghan later in 2003. A number of features (F21-24 and F89) in Area 1 (west) were excavated including seven roughly circular-shaped cremation pits (average diam. 0.5m; D 0.2m). A substantial amount of bone was recovered from four of the features and occasional sherds of pottery were recorded in three examples. Three phases of cremation burial have been interpreted on the site. The earliest phase involves a linear feature with two cremations cut into the base. There were two stake-holes associated with one of the cremations and the second was surrounded by a circle of ten stake-holes. The second phase of cremations were cut into the fill of another feature, while the final phase consisted of a single cremation. See attached plan extract from monitoring report (Hurley 2003). Compiled by: Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly Date of upload: 30 June 2020

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