Knowledge of burial traditions in Ireland in the period immediately prior to the conversion to Christianity is limited. This period, normally called the Iron Age, extended from at least 500 b.c.e. to circa 400 c.e., and is characterized by a dearth of archaeological information, especially about settlement and, to a lesser extent, burial. Ring ditches or ring barrows (small circular ditched enclosures, with an external bank and often a central mound, in the case of barrows, or just a ditch, in the case of ring ditches) were used for burial throughout this period, mostly for burials that were cremated but also on occasion for inhumations. Inhumated burial, sometimes in cemeteries, appears to become more common towards the end of the Iron Age, possibly as a result of influence from Roman Britain, and many of these cemeteries continued to be used after the introduction of Christianity.
Early Medieval Period
There is evidence, both historical and archaeological, that ancestral burial grounds continued to be used for a few centuries after the introduction of Christianity. These burial grounds are mentioned in early Irish canons and a number of sites such as Knoxspark (County Sligo), Ballymacaward (County Donegal), and possibly Millockstown (County Louth), where there is no evidence of a church, appear to be examples of this type of cemetery. An extraordinary example is Clogh-ermore Cave, County Kerry, where pagan-style burial continued up to the ninth century, when the use of the cave for burial was taken over by Vikings.
In common with Christian practice elsewhere, early medieval burials in Ireland were extended inhumations, usually in cemeteries, aligned roughly east-west with the head to the west, and unaccompanied by grave goods. Usually the burials were quite shallow, with burial in a wooden coffin being the exception rather than the rule. Burial in a shroud appears to have been the norm, though there is no evidence for the use of pins to close the shroud. Stones or slabs were used in various ways in association with burials. Sometimes stones were placed at each side of the skull, or under it, forming a pillow. In some cases slabs were set on edge to line the sides and ends of the grave and in other cases slabs, serving as lintels, were placed on these. The latter are sometimes called lintel graves and good examples were found at Reask, County Kerry. In other cases slabs were set on the surface over graves to mark their location, and there is sometimes evidence for slabs set on end to act as head and foot stones as at High Island, County Galway. Slabs with crosses and sometimes an inscription, asking for a prayer for the deceased, are assumed to have been set on top of graves, though mostly they have been found out of context. The inscriptions, normally in Irish, usually take the form: oroit (pray; usually contracted to or) do (for) followed by the name of the person commemorated. It has been possible to date a small number of these slabs where the individual commemorated is also mentioned in the annals. The slabs date from at least the eighth century up until the twelfth. The largest collection of them is at Clonmacnoise, with over seven hundred complete or fragmentary examples, though not one of these has been found in place over a grave. Some of the latest in the series, dating from the eleventh or twelfth century, are inclined to be rectangular or trapezoidal in shape and of reasonably large size. Examples of this type of slab survive in settings over graves at Inis Cealtra (County Clare), and Glendal-ough, though no archaeological excavation of these graves has taken place.
Pillar stones inscribed with the ogham script (known as "ogham stones") were by no means always used to mark burials, but their frequent occurrence in early medieval cemeteries would suggest that some of them did so. The ogham script consists of notches and strokes carved on the angles of these stones, which date from about the fourth to the eighth century and are found mainly in South Munster. The language used is an early form of Irish, and the inscriptions commemorate individuals and their family affiliations.
Often burials took their alignment from an upstanding feature on the site such as a church and, if a later church was built on a different alignment, the burials generally followed suit. Rather than being buried in rows side-by-side, some of these cemeteries were laid out as string burials where the rows ran lengthways, the head of one burial following on from the feet of the previous one. This layout was noted in some of the earliest burials excavated at Clonmacnoise beneath the site of the Cross of the Scriptures.
Just as in ancestral burial grounds important ancestors may have had their graves marked out in a special way, the graves of founding saints or other holy persons came to be distinguished from the generality of graves in Christian cemeteries. Having a saint’s grave or possession of the relics of a saint made a church a focus of pilgrimage, and sometimes the claim was made that burial in the same cemetery as the saint qualified the deceased for automatic entry to heaven. The remains of holy persons from the eighth century and later were often disinterred and placed in an outdoor stone shrine or in a metalwork reliquary within a church. A number of stone slab shrines are known from sites in the west of Ireland, particularly Kerry, and some had a hole in the end slab, through which the relics or the ground over the bones could be touched. At some important sites, such as Clonmacnoise and Ardmore (County Waterford), a small church was built over the supposed grave of the saint.
The main type of non-Christian burial found in Ireland during the medieval period is that of the Vikings or pagan Scandinavians. They first settled in Ireland in the ninth century and founded some towns and smaller trading posts and settlements. Their burials at this early stage were accompanied by grave goods such as swords and personal ornaments. Their most famous burial ground was at Kilmainham (Island Bridge), just west of Dublin. By at least the later tenth century they were Christianized and indistinguishable from the rest of the Irish in their burials.
Post-Norman Period
Some decades after the Anglo-Normans first came to Ireland, new types of grave memorials appear in the form of effigies carved in relief and coffin-shaped floor slabs. These mainly marked interments within the church and the effigies were usually the memorials of important individuals, usually bishops or lords. The effigies were placed in specially constructed niches in the side-walls, or as lids for free-standing sarcophagi, or in later times, as the tops of table or altar tombs. For less-exalted individuals, coffin-shaped floor slabs were used, with usually a floriated cross and sometimes an inscription carved on them. The occurrence of sarcophagi, carved out of a single stone, is confined mainly to the Leinster region, the area most heavily settled by the Anglo-Normans. Tomb inscriptions in French in the thirteenth and early fourteenth century are also found in this area, but Latin was the language most commonly used for tomb inscriptions up to the end of the sixteenth century. As a compromise between the effigy and the floor-slab with floriated cross, a figure or figures were sometimes incised on a flat slab and in other cases, only the head was carved, with or without the cross beneath it. It was only the wealthier classes who would have been commemorated in this way; the majority of the population continued to be buried in simple pits aligned east-west, with the head to the west, in cemeteries attached to the church. Ecclesiastics of all sorts were buried with their heads to the east, the theory being that they would face their flock when rising on the last day. From about the twelfth century, important ecclesiastics such as bishops were sometimes buried with metalwork or other items associated with their position, such as a chalice, which was excavated in a grave at Mellifont; a crozier at Cashel; and a ring and mitre at Ardfert. Scallop shells found with burials at Tuam indicate that these persons had made the pilgrimage to Com-postella in Spain.
There is a lack of tomb sculpture, referred to by Hunt as the "hiatus," from 1350 to 1450, mainly due to the Black Death, which had a catastrophic effect on the colony, especially the towns, where many died as a result of the plague. When the carving of slabs and altar tombs became common again in the later fifteenth century, saints, especially the apostles, were carved on the side panels of the tombs and symbols of Christ’s passion were carved on both tombs and floor slabs. A preoccupation with man’s mortality led to the carving of effigies as cadavers in some cases; a fine example of this is the Rice monument in Waterford cathedral. Contemporary with the fine altar tombs of the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, especially in the regions around Dublin and Kilkenny, were slabs with seven-pointed crosses and long inscriptions in Gothic letters. These styles of memorials continued into the seventeenth century in the case of Catholics of both Gaelic and Old English origin, while new styles of commemoration of the Protestant New English appear from the mid sixteenth century.
