What is recorded here

In 1940, an excavator clawed two urns from a Balleally sandpit, stripping their bases and exposing ancient ashes to modern air. The vessels may have held food for the dead rather than bones, suggesting a banquet prepared for someone no longer breathing. They emerged broken because machinery does not recognise sacrifice, yet the act of burying them implies a community that believed departure required hospitality.

Mechanical excavation of a sandpit in 1940 uncovered two cinerary urns (NMI 1940:81a). The burial type is not known. They are probably food vessel urns (Mount 1989, 270-280). Both vessels are missing their bases which suggests that they were inverted when they were damaged by the mechanical excavator (Waddell 1990, 80). Not precisely located. Compiled by: Geraldine Stout Date of upload: 26 August 2011

Urn burial, likely dating to the Early Bronze Age. The presence of food vessel urns suggests a funerary practice associated with cremation and ritual deposition, common in Ireland during this period.

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