[ 34 '] 



IV. 



A NOTE ON SOME HUMAN BONES FEOM AN ANCIENT 

 BURIAL GROUND IN DUBLIN. 



By JOHN R. D. HOLTBY, M.B., B.S., 



Chief Demonstrator of Anatomy, Trinity College, Dublin. 



(From the Anthropological Laboratory, Trinity College, Dublin.) 



Read May 11. Published August 21, 1914. 



Early in 1913 workmen, in the course of some excavations under the City 

 Hall in Dublin, came across a number of bones which, with two exceptions, 

 proved to be human remains. Thanks to the courtesy of the City Coroner, 

 Dr. Louis Byrne, I had the privilege of examining these, and as opportunities 

 for observing skeletons of the ancient Irish from authentic sites but rarely 

 occur, it has been thought worth while to place on record notes regarding these 

 specimens, with some remarks regarding special characteristics of the lower 

 limb bones. 



A brief note as to the history of the site from which these skeletons were 

 obtained will not be uninteresting ; it is taken from Gilbert's History of 

 Dublin. On the south side of Cork Hill there was originally a church 

 dedicated to the Virgin Mary and named, " owing to its proximity to a mill 

 dam," St. Marie de la Dam. The precise date of its erection is not known, 

 but it was most probably founded before the twelfth century, as in the 

 archives of the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity is preserved a deed executed 

 about 1179 by Archbishop Lorcan O'Tuahal, and among the signatories to it 

 as witness is Godmund, priest of St. Mary's. 



At the end of the sixteenth century the church and graveyard came into 

 the possession of Richard Boyle, first Earl of Cork, and on its site he built 

 Cork House, the graveyard becoming portion of the garden. This house 

 afterwards changed hands and was used for many purposes, being finally 

 demolished in 1768, a new building or exchange being commenced in the 

 following year. In 1852 the latter was taken over by the Corporation for 

 use as a City Hall, and it was deep under the basement of this that these 

 bones were found. We thus see that this graveyard may have been in use 

 for at least four hundred years, from some time in the twelfth century, or 

 probably earlier, until well on into the sixteenth. It is likely, however, that 



