Making Connections

Making connections: new analysis of the Fourknocks passage tomb burial deposits. Presented as part of Heritage Week 2024. Join us for a presentation and conversation between Dr Jessica Smyth (School of Archaeology, University College Dublin) and Dr Jonny Geber (School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh). Three mounds at Fourknocks, Co. Meath were excavated in the early 1950s by P.J. Hartnett of the National Museum of Ireland, revealing a Neolithic passage tomb and likely associated cremation site, and an Early Bronze Age burial mound (Fourknocks I, II and III). Fourknocks I and II contained nearly 100kg of cremated and unburnt human bone deposits that were only briefly assessed following excavation, and no radiocarbon dates were ever obtained. Our current understanding of the function and use of the Fourknocks monuments, as well as the complexity of Neolithic funerary rites that took place on the site, is thus limited. A new research project, funded by the Royal Irish Academy and led by Dr Jessica Smyth (University College Dublin) and Dr Jonny Geber (University of Edinburgh), is fully recording these remains to modern osteoarchaeological standards, giving us exciting new insight into the adults and children deposited at Fourknocks and the communities and kin that laid their remains to rest. This important skeletal assemblage is one of the very few fully recovered from an Irish passage tomb excavation. It gives us a rare opportunity to examine how people lived, and died, approximately 5000 years ago, and how the rites and rituals at Fourknocks connect with other monuments in the passage tomb tradition, such as Newgrange, Knowth, Carrowmore and Carrowkeel. By revisiting the Fourknocks assemblage 80 years after it was excavated, this project is set to transform our understanding of how society and belief was structured in Neolithic Ireland. This event is supported by funding from the National Monuments Service, Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage.