County: Dublin Site name: ADAMSTOWN
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 05E1295
Author: Ellen O’Carroll, The Archaeology Company, 17 Castle Street, Dalkey, Co. Dublin.
Site type: Urban burial ground
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 703028m, N 732826m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.335639, -6.453048
Human remains were located within the road-take of the Adamstown link road (ALR) at the rear of the old Lucan train station adjacent to the Ascon compound in Adamstown, Dublin. The investigations involved the excavation of human remains uncovered during the course of topsoil-stripping in advance of the construction of the ALR. The excavations entailed the lifting of 36 full or partial skeletons and eight disarticulated skeletons. Two linear features and two deposits were also excavated at the site.
The skeletal remains were primarily orientated in a west–east direction, with heads to the west, but a number were aligned slightly along a south-west/north-east axis and two along a north-west/south-east axis. All were in simple graves, with no traces of any coffins or grave-markers. They appeared to represent 43 adults and one infant. A single find uncovered with a burial was a fragment of plastic rosary beads found in the pelvic region of Skeleton 10. This find may not suggest a modern date for the burials, as they were disturbed and truncated by the railway wall, which appears to date to the 1950s. It is possible that the rosary beads were interred when the burial was disturbed during the demolition of Lucan station or the construction of the wall that divided the site from the Dublin/Kildare railway line. Removal of the wall and build-up on its southern side revealed that skeletal remains did not extend over the northern side of the existing railway wall.
It is hoped that further post-excavation and osteoarchaeological analysis of the remains will indicate a possible date for the site.
