County: Limerick Site name: BALLYNAGALLAGH, Lough Gur
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 94E0101
Author: Rose M. Cleary, Dept. of Archaeology, University College Cork
Site type: Enclosure
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 564358m, N 639247m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.503454, -8.524976
This excavation was a research project funded by UCC and carried out over a three-week period in July 1994. The site lies on the western side of a former lake, now known as the Red Bog. This is separated from Lough Gur by a limestone ridge and in an area where there has been no previous archaeological excavation. The site was first detected from low altitude aerial reconnaissance and consists of a very denuded enclosing bank surrounding an oval shaped area of c. 140m x 100m. A magnetometer survey of part of the site (in 1993) showed that anomalies existed both within and outside the enclosure. The excavation of 1994 was carried out to determine if these anomalies were archaeological in origin.
Two test trenches were excavated. One was across the suspected line of the bank and the second was within the enclosure. The results showed that a shallow ditch exists in the area of the denuded bank. The excavation of the second trench, within the enclosure, uncovered numerous archaeological features previously undetected by the magnetometer survey. These features included a ditch (?) or a portion of a very large pit, smaller pits and some paved areas. None of the features were fully excavated as the excavation was not designed to investigate but merely to determine if archaeologically derived features existed within the area of the site surveyed by magnetomer.
The results of this excavation showed that the magnetometer survey did not record all the sub-surface features and that archaeological features exist in areas which appeared sterile in the magnetometer plots.
