2001:940 - BALGEEN 1, Balgeen, Meath

An assessment was carried out here between 12 and 14 July 2001 in advance of topsoil-stripping associated with the construction of Contract 7 of the Northern Motorway at the site provisionally identified at Balgeen 1.

The site was revealed as a potential archaeological site by an aerial video of the motorway taken by Mr Ben Corcoran in late March 2001 and seen by ACS Ltd some months later. The video showed two very visible dark concentric circles or rings on the surface of the field in rough pasture, measuring c. 13m and c. 22m in diameter respectively. A site visit in late June 2001 failed to identify any ridges, depressions or features to suggest the presence of an archaeological site. A geophysical survey was carried out on 27 June under licence number 01R057 to determine the presence/absence of archaeological deposits. However, this did not indicate the presence of archaeological features or stratigraphy.

Prior to this testing, the area was strimmed to remove the long grass. This revealed four circular machine cuts in the ground, forming two concentric circular ruts. It was clear that these concentric ruts were the overgrown remains of what had originally been fresh machine cuts recorded in the aerial video of March 2001. These became clearly visible on the ground when the site was strimmed and also in section following the testing in Trenches 1 and 2. Further large-scale testing was undertaken in order to fully expose and follow the feature uncovered in the corner of Trench 1, which was identified as a post-medieval field drain. Two further post-medieval/modern field drains were also exposed and identified.

The rectangular pit F011 is clearly modern in date as it had been backfilled with a dark grey clay containing frequent amounts of dried grass that had been mixed with the spoil when it had been excavated, possibly during the late summer of 2001. In conclusion, the cuts visible in both aerial photographs were clearly modern machine cuts caused by the teeth of the machine bucket digging into the ground when the machine spun around on its axis. These were not visible during the site visit or geophysical survey and were only exposed when the long grass was removed before the assessment. All the features exposed during the assessment were identified as post-medieval/modern field drains and no archaeological deposits or features were exposed. The three finds recovered from the topsoil were modern in date.