A chance find during the building of a by-pass in County Donegal led to the discovery of an ancient church and graveyard. As BBC NI's Dublin correspondent Shane Harrison now reports, an analysis of human remains has given us some extraordinary insights into the lives of our ancestors in early medieval times.

The remains of 1,300 men, women and children dating from the 8th to the 16th century were taken to the Institute of Technology in Sligo for initial examination.

Dr Jeremy Bird, the Head of Science at the institute, said that by using samples experts were able to determine some of the causes of death including scurvy, violence, cancer and tuberculosis....