County: Tyrone Site name: KNOCKROE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: Brian B. Williams, Historic Monuments and Buildings Branch, DOE(NI)
Site type: Cist
Period/Dating: Bronze Age (2200 BC-801 BC)
ITM: E 636543m, N 889093m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.748530, -7.432388
A Bronze Age cist was discovered at Knockroe on the east bank of the Mourne River some 4km south-east of the village of Sion Mills. The site of the discovery is on the summit of a small sandy hill overlooking the confluence of the Mourne River and the Douglas Burn.
The cist was found by Eugene McNamee. He was gathering stones from the surface of a ploughed field before planting barley and dislodged two flat stone slabs revealing a cist grave. Excavation of the cist was undertaken by Historic Monuments and Buildings Branch on 17 April 1987.
The cist was found to be set into ginger-coloured coarse gravel 0.12m below the present ground surface.
It was rectangular in shape, aligned north-east/ south-west and measured 0.73m by 0.46m by 0.45m deep. It was defined on the north-west and south-west sides by two stone slabs. Elsewhere the side of the grave was defined by boulders and by the edge of the gravel pit at north. The floor of the cist was paved with three closely-fitted stone slabs. Two flat slabs were used to form the roof of the cist, but these had been removed at the time of discovery.
An intact vase urn was found inverted over a large cremation burial, and was accompanied by a burnt plano-convex knife and a fragment of a bone toggle. The cremated bones were examined by Dr J.L. Wilkinson, Dept. of Anatomy, University College, Cardiff. He found the remains of 5 individuals, representing an adult male under 40 years of age, an adolescent, probably female, aged about 16 years, and three children aged approximately 2, 3 and 4 years respectively. He concluded that it is probable that this united cremation and age pattern signify a family unit which was overtaken by some very sudden catastrophe.
