The urn was then undercut and a flat support fixed under the urn to lift it with the bones undisturbed on to the field. It could be seen at this stage that the pot was cracked in a number of places. The urn is of the encrusted type and of bipartite profile, the two parts being divided by an applied ribthet that runs horizontally around the vessel. In the late Bronze Age of Central Europe, a widespread group of 'Urnfield cultures' was characterised by cemeteries where the cremated remains of the dead were buried in urns, the same as the Urn found in Banagh Cross. In the last quarter of the second millennium, circa 1200 BC , Bronze Age Europe suffered an unexplained breakdown from which it never recovered.
Archaeologists write of a 'general systems collapse'.
Waves of invaders descended on the remnants. Crete, having barely withstood a series of terrible natural disasters, had already fallen to the Mycenean Greeks, before Mycenae itself was destroyed. Within the space of a single century, many of the established centers passed into oblivion. Tribes overran the Aegean from the interior. The Hittite Empire in Asia Minor came to an end.