Cist in Ardballymore

The National Museum of Ireland recorded that 'in August 1956 a short cist containing a cremation and a vessel was discovered during field clearance near Kilbeggan, Co. Westmeath. The work was being carried out on behalf of the Land Rehabilitation Project, and the capstone was broken into small pieces with a sledgehammer before it was recognised as a cist. The contents were completely cleared out by the workers. The discovery was reported to the Gardaí at Kilbeggan, who took possession of the bones and informed the NMI. The site was investigated by Dr Joseph Raftery and the human remains were examined by Laureen Buckley. The site was in the townland of Ardballymore, south Co. Westmeath. It was on the top of a small gravel hillock, approximately 90m above sea level. The cist was located only south-west of another in Kilgaroan townland (WM037-010----) which had been excavated the previous month by Ellen Prendergast (Cahill and Sikora 2011, vol. 1, 513-16). The grave consisted of a short cist, rectangular in plan, with its long axis aligned northwest/south-east. It measured 0.71m long by 0.45m wide by 0.45m high. The cist was formed of four main side slabs set on edge, with one slab at each side. These slabs we regular in shape, with a maximum length of 0.71m and a maximum thickness of 0.1m, with that at the south-eastern end extending some 0.1m beyond the edge of the cist. The north-western end stone was some 0.07m shorter than that at the south-eastern end and was probably added to by a small `padstone’ so that the capstone would rest level on the walls. The cist walls do not appear to have been supported by packing stones. The capstone was smashed into three pieces before the excavation, but according to the plan it was subcircular and measured approximately 1.05m long by 0.9m across by 0.11m thick. The floor of the cist was not paved but a number of small stones appear to have been placed on the floor. The pit dug to receive the cist is referred to but measurements were not provided. The cist contained the cremated remains of an adult male and an adolescent or juvenile (1956:224), and sherds of a tripartite bowl. According to the finders, the cist was almost completely filled with sand. The cremated bones were apparently scattered throughout this sand and not concentrated in one particular area. The sherds of the bowl that were discovered at the time of Raftery's inspection lay in the north-western end of the cist, towards the centre of the wall. A sample of the cremation was submitted for ANTS dating and yielded a date of 3695±40 BP, which calibrates to 2200-1950 BC at 95.4% probability. Brindley (2007, 173, 242) has placed the vessel in stage 1 of the development of bowl tradition pottery, which is dated to 2160-2080 BC.' (Cahill and Sikora 2011, vol. 1, 478-80).