County: Tyrone Site name: CLOGHER DEMENSE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: Mr. R. Warner, Department of Antiquities, Ulster Museum
Site type: Hillfort
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 653740m, N 850602m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.401175, -7.172355
PHASE A. No further evidence relating to the Neolithic.
PHASE Ba. A ‘habitation’ platform with hearths, small postholes and stakeholes and flat bottomed coarse pottery.
PHASE Bb. The unidirectional ploughing of some 20cm of soil over the platform of phase Ba.
PHASE C. Large pits, with associated club-rim course pottery, post-dating phase Bb, and apparently bounded by a drystone ‘cashel’-like wall. It is possible that this phase belongs to the latest Bronze Age.
PHASE Ia. The exact chronological relationship of the Hill Fort bank to the internal phases is still not clear. It has therefore been given a separate phase, although the probability is that it belongs either to phase C or to lb.
PHASE IIa. The Ring ditch enclosure (previously Phase lb.) is now seen to belong to the 5th and 6th centuries A.D. This season it produced a large quantity of sherds of class B amphorae and the debris from a factory producing penannular brooches of the ‘Irish developed-zoomorphic type’. A late-Roman bracelet, of perhaps 4th century date, had been cut up as raw bronze. The iron-smelting furnace (Excavations 1973) has produced a Radiocarbon date placing it into this phase.
PHASE lIb. The Ringfort has now produced a great deal more pottery of Class E, (and other imported types), a hand-pin, and a hoard of iron objects (including a double bladed axe). The iron bull-head mount once thought to be “Belgic” is now believed to be of 7th century date, and to belong to this phase.
Although the major occupation lasted only to circa A.D. 800, a scatter of late medieval material may indicate further small scale use of the site.
An information sheet dealing with the imported pottery may be obtained from the director.
