ireland Multi-period burials

Excavating death
Newford,
Ballygarraun,
and Carrowkeel
The Galway to Ballinasloe N6 road scheme in
the Republic of Ireland was 56km long: metre
for metre, one of the largest archaeological
projects anywhere in the world. The
archaeology found along the scheme has shed
new light on the treatment of the dead at
crucial stages of Irish history. Brendon Wilkins
explains the evidence.

T
he massive scale of the N6 road
scheme project was typical of
the Irish ‘Celtic Tiger’ economic
boom – a golden age for archaeo-
logical discovery, paid for by an
annual road building budget esti-
mated in 2005 at €1.5bn. Thirty-six sites were
All photos: Headland Archaeology Ltd unless otherwise noted.

excavated along the road scheme, ranging from

the prehistoric to the early modern period. Over
the winter of 2005-2006, on behalf of Headland
Archaeology Ltd, I excavated a quarter of these
sites, nearly every one a mortuary site.
Photo: Brian Mac Domhnaill

There were 13 funerary sites discovered on the

N6, including one late Neolithic and one early
Bronze Age cremation site, four Bronze Age cre-
mation sites, one Bronze Age funerary pyre, one right Sunset over the
cemetery at Carrowkeel.
Iron Age cremation, one multi-period cemetery, 

36 current archaeology | www.archaeology.co.uk September 2010 |

 WINNER 2010 awards for the
presentation of Heritage research

in Galway

| Issue 246 www.archaeology.co.uk | current archaeology 37

 ireland Multi-period burials
image: Jonathan Millar
Late Neolithic/ Bronze Age
Early Bronze Age
County galway
ireland
top This illustration
shows the distribution of
funerary sites excavated
on the N6 road scheme.
38 current archaeology | www.archaeology.co.uk
Late Iron Age Multi-period
Bronze Age cemetary
County galway
N6
one Early Medieval transitionary burial, two Early
Medieval cemeteries, and one Post Medieval chil-
dren’s burial ground. This feature will focus on just
three of those sites: the Bronze Age pyre at Newford,
a solitary burial of the Early Christian period from
Ballygarraun West and the early Medieval ‘cíllín’
cemetery at Carrowkeel. These sites reveal a multi-
tude of different cultural expressions for mortuary
behaviour in prehistoric and Medieval Ireland.
With such a great time span to get to grips with, we
might begin by asking: how do we learn about early
societies from the way in which they treat death?
Early Post Medieval
Medieval
Human skeletons often reveal more about the
life of an individual than their death. Osteo-
archaeology can assess how long people lived,
their sex, diet, stature, and whether they suf-
fered illness or disease – but the scope of funerary
archaeology is much broader. Mortuary behav-
iour is not just concerned with the dead, but also
the living people who buried them. A funeral
can involve many activities, such as ceremony
and feasting, which may have been more signifi-
cant to the mourners than the actual moment
of burial but which leave only faint traces in the
archaeological record. Knowledge of the anthro-
pology of ritual is essential in order to understand
a funerary site. Archaeologists must look beyond
both dirt archaeology and modern attitudes
towards death in order to breathe life back into
mortuary remains.
The Newford Bronze Age burial
In prehistoric Ireland, cremation was the usual
process for disposal of the dead, and the material
remains are at best fragmentary. In many cases,
September 2010 |
image: Eavan O’Dochartaigh
Pyre constructed
above pit here
cremation pits do not contain enough material to
be a complete skeleton, and we must assume then
that only a token part of the cremated remains
are buried. It is not unusual to find cremation
pits (where remains are collected from a pyre and
deposited in pits or funerary vases) but it is rare
to find any evidence of the actual pyre. Remark-
ably, as well as finding token cremation burials at
Newford (pits containing a miniscule quantity of
burnt bone and pyre debris), we also discovered a
Late Bronze Age funerary pyre dating to between
1000-800 BC, one of only a handful of such sites
ever found in Ireland. Token cremation burials are
a typical feature, but normally contain such small
quantities of bone that many archaeologists have
questioned what actually happens to the bone
after burning. Here, the unique evidence found
at Newford provides a rare insight.
The pyre had been constructed above a large
pit, 3.5m long by 2m wide and 0.75m deep,
which would have aided in the updraft of flames.
The pyre superstructure would have been con-
structed from stacked firewood, with the body
laid on top. This structure had collapsed into
the pit after burning, depositing about 700g of
human bone, including fragmentary remains of
finger bones, teeth and skull. Modern cremation
techniques result in the production of between
1k and 3k of human bone from an adult body,
and we estimate that archaeological contexts
should yield a similar quantity of burnt bone.
Using these estimates, it is clear that bone had
been removed from the Newford pyre following
burning. Only 15g of bone was recovered from
cremation pits on site, suggesting that the rest of
the charred remains may have been destined for
non-funerary uses.
| Issue 246
You only die twice ABOVE The pyre
following excavation
at Newford, showing
By carefully observing funerary customs in dif-
the large pit on which
ferent types of societies all over the world, archae- firewood would have
ologists can broaden the scope of their analysis. been stacked.
The anthropologist Robert Hertz used evidence
INSET One of 14 token
from contemporary traditional societies in
cremation pits containing
Borneo, observing that funerary rituals can be miniscule quantities of
divided into two separate actions – primary and burnt bone.
secondary burial rites – a distinction that high-
Above LEFT
lights the crucial difference between ‘physical’
Reconstruction of a
and ‘social’ death. Primary burial rites take place pyre made from stacked
soon after physical death, and in Borneo this firewood, with the body
entailed leaving the body to decay completely. laid on top.
Once the bones were de-fleshed, they were then
removed to their final resting place, where sec-
ondary burial rites could be performed. Hertz
argued that what happens physically to the body
after death symbolised beliefs about the progress
of the soul. Just as the decaying corpse is excluded
from the the world of the living, so the soul of
the dead person cannot immediately enter the
society of the dead: they are in an intermediate
state. Whilst primary rites may take place soon
after an individual has physically died, social
death will only occur after secondary burial rites
and a successful completed funerary ritual.
Cremated human bone has been found often
on Irish Bronze Age settlement sites, in house
foundations and ritual pits, leading some
archaeologists to argue that it was being used as
a ‘social artefact.’ This seems like a bizarre prac-
tice to us now: how could burnt bone be used in
social contexts? But think of all the complex legal
arrangements that have to be made when our
own loved ones die. Death ruptures the fabric of
social relations and it is vital, following a funeral, 
www.archaeology.co.uk | current archaeology 39
 ireland Multi-period burials
RIGHT The antler that bonds are maintained
PHOTO: Valerie J Keeley Ltd
found in the burial at and extended. By using
Ballygarraun West.
human remains as a social
artefact, they could forge the
new relationships through cer-
emonial exchange between different groups.
Land and belongings could be redistributed, and
claims to ancestral territory legitimised through
deliberate deposition of these remains in specific
locations.
An un-Christian burial at
Ballygarraun West
Our second unusual burial belongs to the Early
Christian period: but how far had Christianity
really penetrated Irish life? In this age of sci-
ence and scepticism, ghostly apparitions can be
explained away to nothing. However, as the pre-
historic sites discovered on the N6 demonstrate,
our modern-day funerary behaviour is very dif-
ferent from a world where death was experienced
as a profound encounter with another world.
The great transition came in the Early Medieval
period, when those encounters were challenged
by new beliefs that sought to distance themselves
from the pagan past and monopolise the passage
of the soul.
Early Medieval Ireland (AD 500-850) is also
known as the early Christian period, as Christi-
anity had become the dominant religion by the
below Excavating the
Carrowkeel cemetery on a 6th century AD. Christian beliefs may well have
cold winter morning. been the official orthodoxy, but the N6 funerary
40 current archaeology | www.archaeology.co.uk
sites indicate that in some
places pagan burial customs were
much slower to change.
This is well illustrated by the single, isolated
burial excavated at Ballygarraun West by John
Lehane. The grave was radiocarbon dated to
between the early-5th and late-7th centuries
AD, a transitional period when Christianity was
expanding and consolidating its position as the
dominant faith. Christians always buried their
dead in consecrated cemeteries, yet this was a
single, isolated burial. The grave was defined by
a simple east-west cut 1.5m long and 0.8m wide,
and contained the remains of an adult female,
estimated to be about 40 or 50 years old on the
basis of teeth and bone degeneration. However,
other features of the inhumation were distinctly
pagan. She was lying on a bed of partially car-
bonised plant material of alder and hazelwood,
together with cereal grains such as black bind-
weed, barley and wheat. This had been scattered
into the grave before receiving the body, and a
piece of naturally shed antler had been placed
over her pubic region.
Two aspects of the burial might be consid-
ered Christian. The positioning of the body as a
supine east-west inhumation is usually regarded
as a Christian practice, combing the belief that
September 2010 |
the dead will rise again, with an alignment with An early cíllín
the orientation of the rising sun during Easter- at Carrowkeel
tide. A lack of grave goods is also interpreted as a
changing conception of the afterlife from a pagan Our third interesting
to a Christian world-view. However, analysis burial site was a cemetery
of other sites excavated in Ireland suggests that at Carrowkeel, which
positioning the body in this manner is actually had all the hallmarks of
a Roman burial custom that was adopted inde- a cíllín (pronounced ‘ki-
pendently of Christianity, so there must be other lleen’). In later and Post
supporting evidence in order to determine the Medieval Ireland, unbap-
religion of an individual. tised children were not
Whilst the meaning of the Ballygarraun West permitted to be buried
burial remains elusive, it provides intriguing in consecrated ground,
evidence that the supremacy of the Christian but were interred in cíllín
authorities was not yet above challenge. Burning cemeteries - a practice
of grain is known from slightly later Anglo-Saxon that continued right up
burials in England, and is interpreted as a sym- into the mid-1960s. The
bolic practice associated with purification, an origin of this practice is
action condemned by the ecclesiastical authori- often assumed to be asso-
ties. If the performance of these rituals was a chal- ciated with the adoption
lenge to the contemporary Church, the isolated of Christianity, and the
location of burial was another bone of conten- Medieval Church’s doc-
tion. Monks, ecclesiastical tenants and sections trine of Limbus Infantus.
of the wider community were being encouraged Baptism was the necessary threshold through above Excavating the
to recognise their affiliation in death through which all must pass before entering Christian earliest burial in the
cemetery at Carrowkeel:
burial at ecclesiastical sites, though a large cem- society, without which incorporation into the
an adolescent burial in a
etery site excavated on the N6 indicates a con- society of the dead was impossible, and thus semi-flexed position, in
tinued use of ancestral burial grounds late into unbaptised children, together with suicides and the terminus of a ditch
the Medieval period. murderers, could not be buried in consecrated which partially enclosed
the cemetery.
burial grounds, but had separate burial grounds
of their own, called cíllíni. left Three intercutting
Cíllíní burial grounds, also known as ceallúnach, burials of children, dating
callragh and caldragh, are unique to Ireland, and to the earliest phase at
Carrowkeel, c.AD 650-
are most commonly found in the western coun-
850.
ties. Generally dated to the Post Medieval period,
cíllíní are most often located within Early Medi-
eval settlement enclosures that had fallen out
of use. They are also frequently associated with
boundaries in the landscape, such as ringforts,
crossroads, cliffs, rivers, tidal markers, wells or
other clandestine places. A recent analysis of
similar sites in County Kerry revealed that 51%
of cíllíní were sited within the confines of a
pre-existing archaeological monument; 22.6%
were associated with Medieval church sites and
16% within ringforts and cashels. The word
cíllín itself was thought to derive from the Latin
cella, meaning little church or oratory, probably
because these sites had been chosen because of
their earlier religious association.
By the end of the 12th century, records show
that baptisms were performed at the earliest
opportunity. The concept of ‘original sin’ main-
tained that the infant was the fruit of carnal 

| Issue 246 www.archaeology.co.uk | current archaeology 41

 ireland Multi-period burials
lust; thus, without removing the
stain of sin from their souls, dead
children would be denied entry to
heaven, and remain for all eternity in a
realm between heaven and hell referred to
as Limbo or limbo infantus. The 12th century
Church reformation had also led to the abandon-
ment of many ecclesiastical sites throughout the
country, and as these sites fell out of use and were
marginalised in the contemporary landscape,
they were perceived as a physical embodiment of
Limbo, in common with other abandoned mon-
uments from the past.
The hilltop cemetery at Carrowkeel appears to
be such a cíllín. It comprises 132 burials, of which
an overwhelming number are children’s graves.
Measuring 65m x 47m, it was defined by a 1.5m
deep ditch. Roughly two-thirds of the site was
excavated in total, with the cemetery area con-
tinuing beyond the limit of excavation. It is situ-
ated on the western brow of an east-west ridge of
higher ground, overlooking an Early Medieval
settlement, consisting of cashels (a stone wall of
images: Jonathan Millar
rough stone enclosing a settlement or church) a
souterrain, house sites, and a field system.
Carrowkeel was founded in the 7th century
AD. At this time, a great number of enclosed
42 current archaeology | www.archaeology.co.uk
settlements were being constructed in Ireland.
Most fall into one of two categories: ringforts
and cashels, which are secular farmsteads of cir-
cular plan, and ecclesiastical settlements, that
often have larger, less regular but usually curvi-
linear enclosures. Carrowkeel was a type of early
Christian burial enclosure generally referred to as
settlement/cemetery. Used for occupation as well
as burial, these sites are similar to ecclesiastical
settlements, but without church buildings.
Choosing this ancestral site rather than the offi-
cial church burial yard was a deliberate strategy
by a group, probably bound by familial and kin-
ship ties, to re-establish their relationship with
their ancestors and guarantee connection with
the land. Burial within a settlement/cemetery
would have been a visible marker of ownership
of the land. As Christianity and the church estab-
lished a monopoly on salvation of the soul in Ire-
land, the dead were taken instead for churchyard
burial and ancestral burial grounds like Carrow-
keel declined in importance and eventually fell
out of use.
Suffer the little children
ABOVE Site plan of
Carrowkeel, showing An in-depth analysis of the cemetery popula-
location and detail of the
tion has provided some very interesting results
cemetery area.
regarding the origins of segregating children for
burial in Ireland. This was a practice thought to
have originated in the Late Medieval period, but
Below These images,
based on site plans the burials at Carrowkeel point to a much earlier
and geophysics date. About 89% of the burials were infants, juve-
results, show how the niles and foetuses, barely buried beneath the top-
cemetery at Carrowkeel
soil. During the excavation, we quite reasonably
eventually fell out of
use and was reclaimed assumed (given the lack of clear grave cuts) that
by the landscape; it these were cíllín burials; our working hypothesis
was not completely
was that Carrowkeel was an Early Medieval enclo-
forgotten, however, and
sure, which had been reused in the Post Medieval
its boundaries were
respected by farming and period as a cíllín. It has actually turned out to be
other activities. far more interesting: radiocarbon dating on over
September 2010 |
a third of the burials has shown that the segre-
A schematic diagram
gation of children’s graves began in the earliest of the cemetery at
phase of the site, from about AD 700-1100. When Carrowkeel, indicating the
these dates came back, it became clear that we phases of burial based on
radiocarbon dating and
had to revise our assumptions.
grave cuts.
Cíllíní are sensitive subjects; some were in use
into living memory and are strictly off-limits,
others have been neglected, forgotten and bull-
dozed to make way for modern development.
Very few of these sites have been comprehensively
dated and therefore may be much older than we
think. And, perhaps the way we have categorised
these cemetery populations into foetus, peri-
Phase 1 AD 650-850
nate, infant, and younger child are also blinding
Phase 2 AD 850-1050
us to what is most important about these sites. Phase 3 AD 1050-1250
Medical technologies and modern attitudes Phase 4 AD 1250-1450
towards parenthood focus development of the Grave Cuts
‘person’ into clearly defined stages; in the past, it
was precisely the lack of definition of children as
full social beings that marked them out for sepa-
rate burial treatment. How can children join the who, through their own deeds, had offended the
Source
society of the dead if they haven’t yet officially social order. Brendon Wilkins
joined the society of the living? Cíllín cemeteries As post-excavation work is finished and these Senior Project Manager
are as much about social death as they are about sites are prepared for final publication, we might Wessex Archaeology
B.Wilkins@wessexarch.
physical death. The infant segregation in the conclude by asking: what did we gain by waking co.uk
Early Medieval period at Carrowkeel shows that the dead from their eternal slumber? In 2008,
acknowledgements
divisions were already being drawn between non- there were 279 road traffic deaths in Ireland, and
Sincere thanks to
adults and other individuals, long before the Late the sight of bouquets of flowers taped to railings Headland Archaeology
Medieval practice of cíllín burial that occurred and lamp-posts is now a familiar site to many (Ireland) Ltd, and Jerry
O’Sullivan of the National
after Christianity bedded down as the main faith motorists. The most compelling argument for Roads Authority, acting
and these divisions became doctrine. building roads is the amount of lives that will be on behalf of the Galway
Later generations continued to use the cem- saved; there’s nothing safer than a long straight County Council.
etery at Carrowkeel intermittently until the end road, so by acting intelligently, death can be
of the 15th century. Ancestral cemeteries were cheated. In addition to building safer roads, per- further reading
eclipsed but not forgotten, and it is no coinci- haps another way death can be cheated is through
Wilkins, B and Lalonde,
dence that they were predominantly used for archaeology. Many hundreds, even thousands, of S. ‘An Early Medieval
the burial of children. Surviving at the edge of years after the final reckoning, we can use scien- settlement/cemetery
tilled fields and pasture, these abandoned enclo- tific methods and theories to unlock knowledge at Carrowkeel, Co.
sures were marginal places in the landscape: ideal of life and death. In excavating the dead and for- Galway’, Journal of Irish
Archaeology, Vol. XVII,
repositories for the remains of the troublesome gotten, archaeology is one tangible way in which pp57-83.
dead who lay beyond normal social categories or personal loss becomes society’s gain. C a

| Issue 246 www.archaeology.co.uk | current archaeology 43