County: Offaly Site name: NEW GRAVEYARD, Clonmacnoise
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: E000558
Author: Heather A. King, Skidoo, Ballyboughal, Co. Dublin.
Site type: Settlement cluster
Period/Dating: Medieval (AD 400-AD 1600)
ITM: E 601050m, N 730827m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.327700, -7.984228
Excavation continued on this site with funding from the Office of Public Works and Offaly County Council (see Excavations 1990, 49; 1991, 40–41; 1992, 53–4; 1993, 66–7). Three cuttings (7, 8 and 9) were opened and an area of 124.5 sq m was excavated to natural.
Cuttings 7 and 8
The remainder of what was previously described as a rectangular structure was excavated this year. It is, in fact, D-shaped with six courses of the north wall surviving intact. There was no evidence for a hearth and as this feature retains a thick deposit of yellow sand and gravels it may have functioned as a platform for a house or building. Attached to this structure/enclosure on the west there was a long narrow structure/enclosure with a sand and gravel floor. A 'passage' or metalled surface divided the structure in two and continued as a path in a south-easterly direction. Other features included a stone-flagged area, other possible walls, pits and postholes.
Cutting 9
This cutting was opened within a grave plot with the kind permission of Mr and Mrs Enright-Mooney. A further section of Round 'House' 2 was excavated. No trace of any internal features were uncovered and there is still no evidence for walling. It is possible that this circular spread of yellow sandy soil retained by stones is also a platform on which a structure was built. The section dug this year consisted of an arc of seven large boulders measuring on average 0.55m in diameter. In addition, the corner of a second ? rectangular structure, 1.1m by 1.65m, was uncovered. This appears to have had at least three occupation surfaces and a number of postholes adjacent to the walls may provide evidence for roofing and walling. Three pits were also excavated in this area; one may have contained a timber-framed structure supported on four large posts. There was no evidence that this had been burnt and possibly rebuilt.
Finds
Four hundred and eighty-seven artefacts were found this year. Material was recovered from the disturbed levels by sieving and included blue and green glass beads, bronze stick pins, coins of Edward I or II and a possible Anglo-Saxon coin, evidence for bronze metal working, a bone trial piece, hone stones, an armour piercing arrowhead etc. Stratified material included bronze stick pins, a bronze binding strip, bone comb fragments, bone off-cuts and worked bone/antler, crucible and mould fragments, a cross slab fragment, off-cuts of bronze, a very large range of iron objects, a blue enamel bracelet fragment, jet/lignite bracelet fragments, baked clay (mortar/mould fragments ?), furnace material and slag. A very large quantity of animal bones and fish bones was again collected.
