What is recorded here

Littleconnell in County Kildare held a Bronze Age cremation burial inside a small upright pottery vessel, waiting beneath soil later stripped for a modern medicine facility. When machinesScarred the land in 2004, the buried person emerged indirectly through broken clay and bone fragments, forcing human memory to interrupt industrial progress. The vessel was lifted whole in an earthen block and opened later in a laboratory, suggesting that even under development, death keeps its own timing and demands witness.

In 2004, portion of a pottery vessel containing fragments of cremated bone was found during a programme of unlicensed monitoring of topsoil-stripping at the Wyeth Medica Ireland facility at Littleconnell. The feature was archaeologically excavated under licence (Licence no. 04E1555 www.excavations.ie) with the assistance of a conservator and appears to represent the remains of a Bronze Age cremation burial that was contained within a small upright pottery vessel. The vessel was initially removed from the site in a stabilised earthen block and later excavated in controlled laboratory conditions. (Excavations 2004, 2007, No. 847, p.203) Compiled by: Gearóid Conroy Date of upload: 30 May 2012

A cremation burial dating to the Early Christian period; its significance lies in providing evidence of funerary practices associated with early monastic or rural settlements in the region.

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