1990:018 - LISLEAGH II, Lisleagh, Cork

Excavations continued for a second season on the second of the two adjacent ringforts in Lisleagh townland, Co. Cork, with funding provided, under the auspices of the National Committee for Archaeology of the Royal Irish Academy, by the Office of Public Works. This season, work continued on the interior and the bank and ditch cuttings. In addition a new cutting was opened linking the most likely area of an entrance to the interior cutting. Test pits were dug in the field to the west of the fort as a follow-up to the resistivity survey in this area last season.

In the interior cutting the numerous late spade- and plough-cut furrows were removed revealing the disturbed latest occupation surfaces of the ringfort, some of which were identified and investigated last season. Further structural features were excavated including several stakes and driven posts in an alternating pattern on the north and east sides of a large recut pit found in the centre of the cutting. This pit produced a high incidence of burnt material and a possible ring pin.

The presumed presence of redeposited 'natural' was in part confirmed this season, particularly on the north and east sides of the site. In the base of a large recut pit there was evidence for heavy localised burning that was not related to the pit complex at all but to a surface 0.2m below that presently under investigation.

As to why at least half of the site is covered by a redeposited 'natural' is not clear except that there is a good possibility that much of it may be upcast from a souterrain which may be beginning to appear in the north-east quadrant of the site.

Several shallow features in the south-east area of the site also produced some iron slag, further supporting the interpretation made last season for ironworking in this area of the site.

In the bank and ditch cutting, the trench was extended in order to better appreciate the late structural evidence built up against the remains of the bank which it seems reasonably certain was demolished prior to this occupation. Several structural features, posts and stakes, were identified cutting a charcoal-flecked pink-grey silty deposit of varying depth that had either been laid or accumulated (most likely the latter) against the demolished bank. To date none of the structural features forms an interpretable structure. In the same area a large elongated pit was identified and excavated; it, however, produced no evidence for its purpose.

This season two new cuttings were opened, one linking the interior to the western perimeter of the fort while the other was at that point on the west interior that had the highest probability of being the fort entrance. Below the sod both cuttings produced evidence of very stony deposits of similar consistency, though disturbed by later ploughing. The presence of stony deposits in these areas, particularly that in the linking trench, would fit in with the evidence for very high resistance readings from this area during the resistivity survey of the interior last year and might well represent disturbed metalling.

In addition, the area alongside the field fence maintained, under the sod, the contours of a break in the earthwork perimeter irrespective of the later field fence. However, the shallow foundation for this field fence was found to have destroyed all that remained of the slighted northern bank terminus. The disturbed metalling appeared to run over the remains of the termini.

Also this summer two trial pits were dug in the area on the outside of the fort in the field between it and Lisleagh I. This was a follow on from a resistivity survey in this area indicating a loose concentration of high resistance readings between the two forts. Although one of these pits produced some evidence to suggest both human activity in the area and subsurface presence of stones, the evidence was not conclusive and will, along with the other evidence produced this season, be followed up in the forthcoming summer.