County: Meath Site name: BETAGHSTOWN
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: E.P. Kelly, National Museum of Ireland, Dublin
Site type: Burial
Period/Dating: Iron Age (800 BC-AD 339)
ITM: E 715826m, N 773018m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.694012, -6.246144
In October 1979, a cemetery, which lay immediately to the east of a Bronze Age cist excavated in 1977, was discovered by the landowner while erecting a pole in his garden. Fifteen graves were located. Two burials were in long stone cists and two were crouched pit burials. The remaining interments were extended inhumations either unprotected or partly protected by a lining of stones. One crouched burial was accompanied by two penannular brooches and an iron belt buckle. A stone axe pendant was suspended from the neck and a bronze plate, perforated at each end, seems to have served as a hair ornament. Remains of two types of textile and of a hair net were present in the grave. The burial was overlain by a long cist.
An iron object, perhaps a strap end, was found in an unprotected extended grave containing the skeleton of a child. The grave group probably dates to between the 2nd and 5th centuries AD.
