DUBLIN, IRELAND—BBC News reports that the skeletal remains of some 100 people have been unearthed in Dublin at the site of St. Mary’s Abbey, a large, wealthy medieval Christian institution run by the Savigniac and Cistercian orders. One of the earliest burials has been carbon dated to the early eleventh century, and another burial contained an eleventh-century stick pin, suggesting that a Christian community used the site for about 100 years before the construction of the abbey in the twelfth century. “It was demolished after 1540 when the monastery was disbanded by Henry VIII and was later the site of a seventeenth-century Presbyterian meeting house,” said archaeologist Edmond O’Donovan. Traces of a “Dutch Billy,” or a house constructed around 1700 by settlers who came to Dublin after William of Orange ascended to the thrones of England, Scotland, and Ireland in 1689, were also uncovered. The remains of the historic buildings will be incorporated into the hotel complex planned for the site. To read about a 1,000-year-old skeleton found tangled in the root system of a tree in Sligo, go to “Irish Roots.”
