County: Galway Site name: GRANNAGH
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: Mr. E. Rynne, Department of Archaeology, University College Galway, for the National Museum of Ireland
Site type: Earthwork
Period/Dating: Early Medieval (AD 400-AD 1099)
ITM: E 551061m, N 710032m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.138566, -8.731416
The site consisted of a high bank with inner fosse surrounding a prominent, almost circular rise at the end of a low gravel ridge. Its flat summit averaged about 7.5m in height above the ring-barrow and measured about 28m in diameter. The sides of the rise had been steeply scarped and the material cast outwards thus creating the surrounding outer bank and shallow internal fosse. The overall average diameter of the site was about 68m. The bank and fosse were gapped in the south east; halfway up the steep slope of this 6m wide entrance was a pair of large and deep pits which reduced the means of access to a stony ‘gangway’ 50cm wide. Before excavation there appeared to be a small enclosure, possibly circular and measuring about 5.5m in average overall diameter, slightly off-centre on the top of the rise. Excavation, however, showed this to consist of a shallow fosse with internal bank forming an almost semicircular arc within and in the neighbourhood of which were several pits and/or postholes, none forming any apparently significant plan. Also found within this general area were two concentrations of cremated bones and one shallow cremation burial.
Finds included a bronze pin of a ring-pin or ring-brooch, iron knives (including some very small examples), an iron ring-pin(?), a bone spindle whorl, bone beads, tiny blue glass beads, a translucent yellow glass bead, fragment of a jet arrulet, a crucible-fragment, a hone-cum-pin-sharpener, the butt of a polished stone axehead and a leafshaped flint arrowhead.
The exposed position, the complete absence of any trace of a hearth, and the widespread scatter of small fragments of cremated bones would seem to indicate that this most impressive site was not used for habitation but more probably only periodically for ritual purposes - perhaps even as an assembly place or inauguration mound such as was indirectly suggested by Prof. R.A.S. Macalister (PRIA, 33 (1917), 508). Although the nearby ring-barrow probably dates from the first couple of centuries after Christ, this site would appear to belong to a period somewhat later, but still within the pagan tradition.
