In common with Christian practice elsewhere, early
medieval burials in Ireland were extended inhuma-
tions, 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 commemo-
rated. 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 elev-
enth 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 occur-
rence 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 fam-
ily affiliations.
Often burials took their alignment from an upstand-
ing 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 cemeter-
ies 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 ances-
tors may have had their graves marked out in a spe-
cial 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 Ire-
land 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 gravegoods 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 some-
times an inscription carved on them. The occurrenceBURIALS