ABSTRACT
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.
