1989:076 - RAFFIN FORT, Raffin, Meath

Prior to its being levelled by bulldozer in 1988, the site consisted of a circular area c.40m in max. diameter, enclosed by a U-shaped fosse and external bank. A gap in the south-south-east may have been an original entrance feature, although there was no corresponding causeway traversing the fosse at this point. A low counterslope bank running across the interior of the site in a north-north-west- south-south-east direction, may have been an original feature.

A five-week excavation programme was carried out in order to assess the extent of the bulldozer damage and to identify the site type. All visible remains of the site had been obliterated by bulldozing and our cuttings revealed that, apart from simply flattening the bank and various internal features, in places all of the original fosse fill had been removed - and later spread over the central area -in order to bury loose hay and scraw. Where intact, the fill of the fosse was a homogeneous brown earth which probably resulted from the gradual and uninterrupted in situ formation of an A-horizon soil. The fosse was originally U-shaped and had a maximum depth of about 1.5m.

In the centre of the site the counterslope bank was revealed to have been the result of an accumulation of a charcoal-stained archaeological deposit on top of a manmade scarp which effectively split the site into two areas of different elevations. The top part of this bank was sheared off by the bulldozer but enough survived to show that the archaeological deposits related to the wall trench of a circular structure, c.7m in diameter, which may have been a house. This is situated immediately to the east. How these features relate to the fosse and bank enclosing the site is unknown. The discovery of a plough pebble in the fill of a drain cutting through the counterslope bank provides a tentative T.A.Q. of the early medieval period for the circular structure. We are not in a position to confirm the site type.

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