County: Louth Site name: DOWDALLSHILL II
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 94E0076
Author: Thaddeus C. Breen
Site type: Fulacht fiadh
Period/Dating: Prehistoric (12700 BC-AD 400)
ITM: E 705828m, N 809210m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.021233, -6.384986
An excavation was carried out for Dundalk Urban District Council to investigate patches of charcoal and burnt stones uncovered in the initial stages of road construction. The site was near the corner of a field which slopes down towards a marshy area near a stream. The uppermost 0.25–0.3m of soil had already been removed.
Two steep-sided, flat-bottomed oval pits were found, dug into impervious yellow clay. They measured 1.6–2m in diameter and 0.5m in depth and were filled with irregular layers of stones showing signs of having been burnt, and charcoal-rich soil, with pockets of clay and sand. One had a few flat stones round the sides and on the base, like a crude lining. Immediately to the north, the natural slope down towards the marshy area had apparently been levelled off by backfilling with similar material. There were also a few thin spreads of similar material on the surface of the clay. Running over the top of all these were a series of shallow linear cuttings, running north-north-east/south-south-west, filled with topsoil. These were from later spade cultivation.
The only finds from the pits were two flint flakes and two tiny fragments of burnt bone. Two pieces of flint were found in the fill of the slope, along with part of a clay-pipe stem and two pieces of coal.
While the pits, their fill, and the location suggest that the site was a fulacht fiadh, no traces of a trough or hearth were found.
13 Wainsfort Crescent, Templeogue, Dublin 6W, for V. J. Keeley-Schmidt, project director
