County: Kerry Site name: ILAUNLOGHAN
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 78:36 Licence number: 92E0087
Author: Claire Walsh and Jenny White Marshall
Site type: Ecclesiastical enclosure
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 436185m, N 573362m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 51.888330, -10.379931
The third eight-week season of excavation took place from June 15, 1994. Funding was as for the '92 and '93 seasons. Excavation work was concentrated in five areas. The shrine mound was completely excavated and partially reinstated, with the discovery of three rock-cut graves which pre-date the gable shrine. These suggest the possibility of an earlier, central, sacred focus in this area.
The midden trench was extended and completed. Over 100 burials, of 18th/19th-century date, had resulted in considerable disturbance of the underlying deposits. Further metalworking debris, including a carved bone motif piece, was recovered from the lowest level of this trench. A succession of pathways and roughly paved surfaces occurred outside the doorway of the dry-stone hut. The western extent of the medieval graveyard was also uncovered in this trench. It is intended to link the midden and oratory trenches in the 1995 season.
A trench over the low enclosing bank to the west of the island revealed the presence of a substantial stone wall, faced on both sides. This area will be extended in 1995. Excavation of the oratory trench was completed in 1995. It was discovered that the leacht on the north side of the oratory, while it cut through two earlier interrals, did not itself serve as a special grave.
In the area immediately to the east of the dry-stone oratory, two superimposed structures on the same alighment as the later oratory were excavated. Both structures extended beneath the east wall of the dry-stone oratory, which appears to overlie the west walls of the underlying structures. The earliest structure is of probable sod wall construction, with stone kerbs, and an internal area of 2m north-south by possibly 3m east-west. A second smaller sod structure measured only 1.2m north-south by c. 0.8m east-west; this may not have been an oratory, but may better be explained as the remains of a leacht.
A final season of excavation is planned for 1995.
15 St Brigid's Rd. Upr., Drumcondra, Dublin 9
