1988:02 - LYLES HILL, Toberagnee, Antrim

A second season of excavation took place in June and July 1988, funded by Queen's University Belfast and the Historic Monuments and Buildings Branch of the DOE(NI).

Work was concentrated in the interior of the enclosure in the area of the 1987 cutting which revealed a length of bedding trench. An area of some 170 sq.m was examined. The bedding trench discovered in 1979 proved to be that of a palisade which was traced running an irregular course for some 15m. Charcoal from this feature produced a date of 2023+50 BC. A second and more substantial stone-packed palisade trench was found upslope and to the east up to 0.75m deep, running roughly parallel with the first palisade and set between 3m and 6m from it. This was exposed to a length of some 27m and again ran an irregular course. Its depth was also variable, determined by the depth at which the bedrock was encountered. At no point was it rock cut. It too contained abundant sherds of unweathered Lyles Hill Ware and a charcoal sample gave a date of 2483+40 BC.

In the area examined this year settlement was abundant in the form of thousands of potsherds, all of earlier Neolithic type and finds similar to those made by Estyn Evans in the form of flint flakes, leaf arrowheads, a roughout and polished fragments of porcellanite axes and a disc bead of dadeite or serpentine (provisional identification). Two flakes of Arran pitchstone were also found in this horizon. The only incidence of later activity was a single barb and tanged arrowhead from the topsoil. Pits, hearths and stakehole settings were also found in the area, once more ostensibly associated with Neolithic activity but further C14 determinations are awaited from these features.