1994:127 - LAHARD, Kerry

This excavation was neccessitated by the widening of part of the main Killarney-Killorglin road (T67) by Kerry County Council and involved the excavation of a 24.2m-wide strip for a length of 50.1m along the southern side of the site.

The excavation took place from October 12–20, with the assistance of the roads and engineering sections of Kerry County Council.

The fort is set on a low hill which slopes quickly down to the south and affords commanding views of the land to the south and south-west, along the river Laune 300m away. The site has a clear view of a large bi-vallate fort on the southern bank of the river Laune (Lissaphuca SMR 65:22). The MacGillicuddy Reeks dominate the skyline to the south and south-west and the village of Beaufort is approx. 0.25 miles to the south-east.

The 1842 and the re-surveyed 1894 editions of the Ordnance Survey 6" map record the site as being a univallate ringfort, however, the fort appears to have been much disturbed prior to both editions and may originally have been a bi-vallate site.

No definite traces of an outer bank remain. However, the boundary between the present roadway and the fort is an abnormally wide earthen bank with a stone core. This is a construction technique often found in ringfort banks and it may be that the boundary is composed, partly, from the remains of a previously unrecorded outer bank. This boundary is at present 1.15m high externally, 0.6m high internally and 3.2m wide at base.

Inside this boundary, on the southern side of the fort, are the only extant remains of the inner ditch. Elsewhere around the site it has been infilled with material, probably taken from the denuded inner bank. Where it remains the ditch is flat-bottomed and 3m wide at base.

The inner bank is preserved, in some form, all round the fort. However, like all the elements of the site, it is best preserved on the southern side. The exaggerated width of the bank, on all except the southern side of the fort, is due to the levelling of this feature.

Internally there are no visible structures or features and the fort measures 34.4m north-south and 38.6m east-west. The total dimensions of the site are 54m north-south and 56.9m east-west.

There is no trace of an entrance feature at any point around the site. The bank/boundary delimiting the northern edge of the present roadway had a number of mature trees growing on it and these were removed. Intermittently along the inner face of the bank a number of stones were revealed. These may be the remains of a stone facing to the bank but given the disturbed nature of the site this could not be said with any certainty. The disturbance of the bank may have taken place during the construction of the present roadway, yet the bank still displays the stone core construction so typical of many ringfort banks.

The ditch inside this bank had been partly infilled with loose stone. The average depth of the topsoil here was 0.27m and this layer rested on the dark brown loam found in the outer bank/boundary. The dark brown loam rested on a 0.18m thick light brown sandy soil which in turn rested on a 0.03m thick hard pan layer which contained a lot of iron pan and small quantities of charcoal (Sample 1). This layer rested on the base layer of the site, a compact cream coloured gravel layer. It should be noted that this distinctive hard pan layer did not occur anywhere else on the site except in the middle of the section across the fort at the point where the inner edge of the ditch and the inner bank meet.

At either end the stratigraphy changes and only two soil layers are visible, a topsoil layer and, clearly seen cutting through the main stratigraphy, the dark brown loam soil used to infill the inner ditch on the eastern and western sides of the fort. At this point the infilled ditch is 1.2m deep and 1.9m wide at base. Excavation further into the site, however, showed the infilled ditch to have had a maximum depth of 2.2m.

Some small lenses of charcoal showed up across the section, predominantly in the area of the topsoil/brown loam transition, and are probably due to the burning off of surface overgrowth such as furze bushes.

Like the possible outer bank, the inner bank was constructed using a stone core which was then covered with earth. However the stratigraphy of the inner bank was very different to that of the possible outer bank as it conformed more readily to the general stratigraphy of the rest of the site.

Within the inner bank, at a depth of 0.4m below the top of the section and 19.3m from the western end of the section, a sub-circular pit was revealed. The pit measured 0.58m x 0.6m and was 0.2m deep. The pit was round-bottomed and appeared to have been lined with a light brown marl clay. It contained large quantities of charcoal, burnt soil and large lumps of iron slag and fused stone (Samples 2 & 3).

The infilled inner ditch at the eastern and western sides of the fort continued to be visible in the section across the inner bank.

Excavation continued into the fort interior where the stratigraphy conformed to that elsewhere in the site. No stone occurred at any point within the fort interior nor was any habitation layer visible. The only finds were modern pottery and one fragment of a clay pipe.

Tralee, Co. Kerry