Page 48 - GAHS Journal Volume 9

EARLY BRONZE AGE BURIALS IN WICKLOW

graves were used. The bodies were all cremated; at first a
considerable effort was made to extract the burnt bones from the
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funerary pyre but later on part of the pyre was deliberately
placed in the grave with the remains of the dead. Some of the
burials were of individual people, a custom which was common
in the Bronze Age, but others contain the remains of two or more
individuals indicating the possibility that funerals took place at
special times of the year and that closely related people who had
died in the period since the last funerary occasion were buried
together. On the other hand, graves, such as one in Cist D (in
illustration below) at Carrig, suggest tragedies where several
members of the same family died at the same time, through
accident or more probably disease, and were interred in a single
ceremony. Two of the cists (C and D) contained several separate
burials some of them consisting of the remains of more than one
individual. It appears that the early burials were carefully placed
into the cists which must have been marked in some manner on
the surface of the cairn; some of the later burials caused damage
to the cists indicating that their exact location under the cairn was
no longer known. The latest burials, belonging to the Late Bronze
Age, were contained in coarse domestic pots or were simply
accompanied by fragments of pottery.

On the next page there is a ground plan and sections of the
early bronze age cemetery cairn at Carrig.

6 Activity associated with a burial.
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