Flat cemetery

The National Monuments Service's description

Situated in a slight fold in a gently undulating landscape, with rock outcrop close to the surface at the S edge of the hollow. Archaeological testing (04E0917) by J. Roynane (2005) at Testing Area 10 of Contract 4 of the M3 motorway identified (excavations.ie 2004:1270) archaeological material that was fully excavated (E003141) in November and December 2006 by E. Lyne (2011) as Kilmainham 1A when an L-shaped area of 7000 square metres was opened. The excavated area was just SW of the multi-period complex of Kilmainham 1C. Two Neolithic structures, a Bronze Age hut-site, a prehistoric boundary and a flat cemetery, were recorded as well as an early medieval cereal-drying kiln and a long ditch that extended into Kilmainham 1C (excavations.ie 2007:1334).

Three small pits (diam. 0.6-0.65m; D 0.24m: diam. 0.49m; D 0.35m: diam. 0.4m; D 0.15m) were in a small area (dims c. 10m N-S; c. 5m E-W) with rock outcrop, and each had fills of silty sand with charcoal and calcined bone that varied in amount from 62gm to 680gm. The remains of an adult male and an adolescent were identified, and one sherd of coarse pottery was retrieved from one of the pits. A sample of hazelnut shell from one pit produced a C14 date of 1619-1458 cal. BC (UBA 12107), while a sample of bone from another provided a date of 975-830 cal. BC (UBA 12945). The use of the cemetery spans the Middle and Late Bronze Age but the rock outcrop had been quarried, and the cemetery might once have been larger. There were some other pits and layers in the vicinity that are probably related, and one deposit in the interstices of the rock-outcrop adjacent to one of the burials contained four sherds of pottery. (Lyne 2011, 29-31)

See the attached plans adapted from Lyne (2011, figs 7, 12)
ME017-085_1 Site plan;
ME017-085004- Cemetery;

Compiled by: Michael Moore

Date of upload: 16 March 2022

References

Lyne, E. 2011 M3 Clonee – North of Kells, Contract 4, Navan to Kells and Kells Bypass. Final Report on Kilmainham 1A, Co. Meath. Licence: E003141. Unpublished report, Irish Archaeological Consultancy

Roynane, J. 2005 M3 Clonee-North of Kells; Contract 4, Navan - Kells and Kells Bypass. Report on Archaeological Assessment at Testing Area 10 in Kilmainham, County Meath. Licence: 04E0917. Unpublished report, Irish Archaeological Consultancy