Flat cemetery

The National Monuments Service's description

In 2003, 'Site No. 1' at Kill Hill was identified at the base of a slope to the north of Kill Hill during archaeological centre-line testing (Licence No. 03E1570: www.excavations.ie) for the N7 Naas Road Widening and Interchanges Scheme, and was fully excavated. The site was first identified as a series of pits arranged in arcs to form two broken concentric rings. The pits were charcoal-rich and contained fragments of burnt bone. An area measuring approximately 30m by 30m was stripped of topsoil around the features and a circular ditch enclosing the pits was evident. The ditch enclosed an area of c. 8m in diameter and was 1.2m wide and 0.4m deep on average. In the interior, seven pits were arranged in arcs to form two concentric gapped circles with a maximum diameter of about 6.5m. The pits were shallow and contained burnt bone and charcoal and one contained a piece of misshapen glass, which, prior to specialist analysis, appears to be the result of some intensive burning. Burnt bone was also recovered from the ditch. At some stage the ditch was re-cut with a narrower ditch.
Preliminary analysis suggests that this site was a Bronze Age burial site, possibly the truncated remains of a cemetery mound or of a small flat cemetery. Further information will be available for the site following specialist analysis.

Compiled by: Gearóid Conroy

Date of upload: 10 June 2011