Stoneyford, in County Kilkenny, Ireland, is the findspot of a single cremation burial discovered in 1852, conventionally dated to the 1st–2nd century AD. The deposit comprised a glass cinerary urn (a cylindrical bottle) containing cremated bone, accompanied by a small bronze mirror and reportedly a lead canister, all of distinctly Roman provincial type.
Source: Pleiades — A Community-Built Gazetteer and Graph of Ancient Places. View the Pleiades record →
It is one of a very small number of finds from Ireland exhibiting clear Roman cultural affinity, and has been variously interpreted as evidence for a Romano-British trader or expatriate resident, a returning Irish traveller, or simply an imported object assemblage; its status as a genuine in situ Roman burial on Irish soil remains debated but, if accepted, makes it perhaps the clearest example of Roman funerary practice in Ireland.
The discovery was made during 19th-century agricultural work and was not the product of controlled excavation, so context is poor; the surviving artefacts, curated in the National Museum of Ireland, have been studied typologically (notably by Bourke and Raftery), but no associated cemetery or settlement has been identified in the immediate vicinity.
Stoneyford, in County Kilkenny, Ireland, is the findspot of a single cremation burial discovered in 1852, conventionally dated to the 1st–2nd century AD. It is recorded in the Pleiades gazetteer of ancient places as a cemetery site from the Roman period in Britain.
Stoneyford is classified as a Roman cemetery — a civilian site in the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer. Roman Britain's archaeology encompasses thousands of sites ranging from legionary fortresses and marching camps to villas, temples and towns.
Several Roman sites lie within a short distance, including Bray (105.6 km), Tara (123.2 km), Drumanagh (135.5 km). Aubrey Research maps over 2,200 Roman sites across Britain, drawn from the Pleiades ancient world gazetteer.
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