County: Armagh Site name: DORSEY
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: C.J. Lynn, Historic Monuments and Buildings Branch, DOE (NI).
Site type: Earthwork
Period/Dating: Iron Age (800 BC-AD 339)
ITM: E 694594m, N 819974m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.120104, -6.553010
Late in 1988 it was reported to the Archaeological Survey that several large pieces of axe-marked oak timber had been discovered while digging a slurry-pit for a new cow-shed. The timbers appeared to have come from the adjacent ditch of the northern rampart of the Dorsey. While the timbers recovered initially lacked sapwood, estimates of the felling dates lay in the 130s-140s BC (M. Baillie, pers. comm.).
Clearly, the dating of these timbers and their context is of crucial interest in attempts to understand the date and evolution of the Dorsey itself. A small pit was opened under licence in June 1989 by machine beside the spot where the original timbers were found. This exposed several further large axe-felled oak trunks and branches and confirmed that they came from the Dorsey ditch. Other timbers, almost certainly from the same context, were recovered at the same time in machine-levelling of surplus spoil from the construction of the cow-shed. A dendrochronological report from the Palaeoecology Centre, QUB, on the timbers recovered in 1989 is in preparation.
