County: Meath Site name: DOWTH
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: Ann Lynch, Office of Public Works, Dublin
Site type: Megalithic tomb - passage tomb
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 701472m, N 773621m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.702422, -6.463201
A single cutting (3.5m x 4m) was excavated immediately west of the entrance shaft to the north tomb, to facilitate the construction of a new entrance and steps.
The earliest phase of activity was represented by several stakeholes/postholes and a shallow pit cut into boulder clay at a depth of 1.1m-1.6m below present ground level. These features are most probably prehistoric although no datable associated material was recovered.
Overlying these early features, a deposit of soil had accumulated to a depth of c. 1m-1.5m. This contained slumped/redeposited cairn material and a large stone (1.6m x 0.9m x 0.45m thick) whose size and proportions suggest a kerbstone which could have been displaced during construction of the shaft or even earlier, when the souterrain was inserted in the edge of the cairn. Amongst the artefacts recovered from this build-up of soil were a flint barbed-and-tanged arrowhead and a sherd of medieval pottery.
