What is recorded here

Charcoal still shadows the urn where cremated bones overflowed its brim, marking one of four burials inside a double-walled ringfort in County Limerick. Ó Ríordáin opened that western chamber during 1934 and 1935, exposing a vessel set mouth upwards in reddish earth rather than locked inside a cist. The dead person may have been someone the fort belonged to, yet no name has returned from the soil; only the shape of the jar and the spill of bone remain witness.

One of 4 urn/cist burials (LI048-034017/020-) in W half of bivallate ringfort (LI048-034016-) excavated by Ó Ríordáin (1940, 128-132) between 1934-5. Urn burial described by Ó Ríordáin (1940, 112) as; ‘Burial No. I – Set in an irregular pocket of the reddish filling already referred to and surrounded by a deposit of charcoal we found, mouth upwards and otherwise unprotected, an urn completely filled with cremated bones some of which were found to have over-flowed the urn and lay in the bottom of the hollow in which the urn stood.’ See attached plans and photos from Ó Ríordáin. Compiled by: Fiona Rooney Date of upload: 5 September 2021

Urn burial in Cush is a prehistoric inhumation burial, likely dating to the Early Christian period, associated with a ringfort. Its significance lies in providing evidence of burial practices within a domestic or settlement context in early Irish society.

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