County: Longford Site name: MELKAGH
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: Gabriel Cooney, Department of Archaeology, University College Dublin
Site type: Megalithic tomb - portal tomb
Period/Dating: Neolithic (4000BC-2501 BC)
ITM: E 616047m, N 787915m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.840475, -7.756166
A second season of excavation at the Melkagh portal tomb was carried out over five weeks in August and early September 1985. The site had consisted of a main and subsidiary chamber set in a cairn but was very badly damaged in 1982/83. The most significant surviving feature appears to be the base of the south-western area of the cairn. This runs for at least 7.5m N-S and is flanked to the west by a dense spread of stones which extends for up to 9m from the cairn edge. The surface of this spread has been disturbed but it has survived to a greater extent than the cairn itself. To the north of the probable location of the main chamber (as indicated by features found in 1984) work centred on a 2.1m x 2.35m 'dump' of stones in a hollow in the sandstone bedrock. Immediately south of this feature there was an area of stones extending 4.1m x 2.6m with a depth of 15-20cm filling a depression in the subsoil. Excavation to the west and north of the 'dump' feature did not reveal any archaeological features. Partial excavation of the 'dump' itself showed that it is over 50cm deep and composed of apparently laid stones decreasing in density with depth in a sandy matrix. Finds from the excavation consisted of several struck chert flakes.
A further 10% of the spoil from the 1982/83 removal operation, which remains as part of a field boundary, was sieved producing three struck pieces of chert and a fragment of a flint implement with a serrated working edge.
