The Bronze Age period lasted in Ireland from about 2500 BC to about 500 BC and the burials of the period show a wide degree of variety with both pits and stone cists used. The pits can be simple holes or can be stone lined and range from circular to oval. More substantial stone built rectangular and polygonal cist graves, like at Keenoge, Co. Meath, were also used. The cist were also buried in holes in the ground. In some instances the cists can assume the proporations of small underground megalithic tombs. The human remains were prepared for burial in a number of ways. Some were placed in extended position into large pits, or in contracted and flexed positions in smaller pit and cists. There is evidence that individuals were bound or tied before burial. On occasion the remains might be stored until the flesh had decayed enough for the bones to separate or disarticulate, and were then interred. Or the remains could be either partially or completely cremated on a funeral pyre. The remains were then collected, and sometimes after further crushing or cleaning placed into the grave, often in a pottery container. The remains were often accompanied by decorated pottery vessels, referred to as food vessels or cinerary urns and less often with objects of stone and bronze. The burials were frequently made in cemeteries which were in use for hundreds of years. These cemeteries might either be in stone built cairns or earthen barrows or were flat.

Fulachta fiadh were an integral component of the Bronze Age landscape and provide significant evidence of activity in areas with little evidence of artifact deposition. Fulachta fiadh usually they consist of horseshoe-shaped heaps of heat-fractured stone mixed with charcoal and dark soil, associated with lined rectangular water troughs and hearths. They are also called burnt mounds and are known from Scotland, Wales, England, Scandinavia and northern Germany.