County: Tyrone Site name: KINKIT
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: Mr. L.N.W. Flanagan, Dept of Antiquities, Ulster Museum
Site type: Cist
Period/Dating: Bronze Age (2200 BC-801 BC)
ITM: E 631345m, N 888593m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.744386, -7.513189
A two-compartment cisted grave, with capstone, found by Mr. J. Marshall, when digging a foundation trench for a wall inside a barn; reported by him to the R.U.C. at Strabane and by them to the Ulster Museum. Each compartment measured about 0.25 x 0.6m and was about 0.4m deep, and 0.3m below floor of barn. Both compartments were about three-quarters full of fragmented uncremated bone. Subsequent sieving of the contents of the graves produced first the tip of a bone pin and than a bone V-perforated conical button. The button is important not only for its own sake (it is the first example to have been found in a good context in Ireland and is the first bone example to have been found in Ireland) but also for the fact that it corroborates nicely the putative Bronze Age date of certain compartmented cisted graves with inhumations.
