County: Down Site name: DUNDRUM SANDHILLS
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: A.E.P. Collins, Dept. of the Environment
Site type: Burial
Period/Dating: Bronze Age (2200 BC-801 BC)
ITM: E 740421m, N 834505m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.240119, -5.845683
A concentration of cremated bones, grey ash (presumably wood ash) and finely divided charcoal occupied a saucer-shaped depression nearly a metre in diameter. Associated with these were a number of plain body sherds of a collared urn and a burnt plano-convex flint knife. Nearly 3m away from these was a concentration of large rim sherds of a collared urn. The sherds in places lay on top of one another in clean sand and on a dark-coloured old land surface at a depth of c.15cm.
The urn had an externally bevelled rim and was decorated with paired parallel impressions of 2-ply twisted cord. Ornament on the bevel was a simple chevron pattern. The rest of the ornament was confined to the collar. The collar itself was subdivided into rectangular panels each of which was filled with oblique, parallel, paired cord-impressions, the whole producing a multiple chevron design.
A main feature of interest concerns the location of sherds in two distinct and separate areas. We are unlikely to have two urns here since a join has been established between sherds from the two areas. The pot would seem to have been broken in antiquity.
