County: Donegal Site name: RINNARAW
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: Thomas Fanning, Dept. of Archaeology, University College Galway.
Site type: Ringfort - cashel and House - early medieval
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 603751m, N 936783m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 55.178314, -7.941110
The second season of excavations at this site was undertaken during a five-week period from late July into August 1988. The work was again undertaken in association with the Portnablagh Hotel and was designed to provide training in excavation techniques for the students of the Department of Archaeology, UCG. A number of foreign students from Denmark and France also participated in the programme of work on the site.
The excavations revealed the plan and form of the stone-built house-site whose foundations had been partly exposed the previous season. The structure is of rectangular plan measuring, internally, some 7m by 5.5m. Only a few of the external facing stones survive but these indicate a widening of the wall widths at midpoint on all four sides and rounded external corners. Internally, the angular corner jointings are clearly defined by a combination of horizontal dry-stone walling and upright slabs as known from some of the Norse houses in the Orkneys and Shetlands.
Within the southern half of the house the floor area is completely paved with large, well laid slabs. This section of the house was delimited by a single course of stones set end to end. In the northern half some further paving was uncovered at a higher level due to the rising bedrock on which the house was built.
Towards the centre of the floor area, the upper levels of what appears to be a small, stone-lined hearth were uncovered, surrounded by some deposits of charcoal and calcined bone. Nearby, close to the northern wall face, a substantial shell midden was partly exposed. This consists, largely, of periwinkles and limpets. Other finds consisted of iron slag, furnace bottoms, and a number of small stone discs. A portion of the lower stone of a rotary disc quern was discovered in the damaged wall-footings along the western side of the house. A further season is planned for 1989.
