County: Clare Site name: PARKNABINNIA
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 95E0061
Author: Carleton Jones, University of Cambridge, Dept. of Archaeology
Site type: House - Bronze Age and House - medieval
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 525369m, N 693329m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.985499, -9.111454
Fieldwork consisted of a survey in 1994 and subsequent excavation in 1995. The initial survey concentrated on the south-east edge of the Burren in the townlands of Parknabinnia, Caherfadda and Commons North. Several previously unrecorded megalithic tombs, large numbers of prehistoric field walls and several habitation areas of various ages were recorded.
The excavation concentrated on a house site in the centre of a circular field system, and finds from two separate occupations were recovered, a Final Neolithic/Early Bronze Age occupation and a much later early medieval occupation. The early medieval occupation debris is characterised by pieces of iron and very small blue glass beads, and also contains bones of cow, pig, sheep/goat, and chicken. The Final Neolithic/Early Bronze Age occupation is characterised by Beaker pottery, dozens of thumbnail scrapers, hollow-based arrowheads and saddle querns and rubbers, but also contains less diagnostic stone drills, hammerstones and numerous stone flakes and chunks that have been retouched along an edge and used as informal tools. Bones of cow, pig, and sheep/goat also appear to belong to this component. Interestingly, although a few pieces of flint were recovered, the stone that was commonly used for the scrapers, arrowheads and other chipped stone tools was the local grey chert that occurs in bands in the Burren limestone.
Concurrent with the excavation of the house, trenches were excavated through many of the surrounding 'mound' walls with the goal of measuring and recording the condition of the bedrock underneath the ancient walls. As the Burren is composed of soft limestone, millennia of rain have slowly eroded away the bedrock, lowering it a little each year. The ancient walls, however, shelter the bedrock underneath them from the eroding forces of the water and the result is that the bedrock under ancient walls is slightly higher than the surrounding bedrock that has been exposed for thousands of years. In general, the higher the preserved bedrock pedestal under a wall, the older the wall.
Some of the mound walls that we trenched were part of the circular field system surrounding the house, while others belonged to more rectilinear field systems higher up the hill and others appear to belong to an early medieval farmstead a little farther north in Caherfadda. Analysis is still ongoing but the production of a chronology of the walls based on their underlying pedestals appears to be possible. Additionally, this 'floating chronology' of the walls will be tied into the dated occupations produced by the house excavation.
Downing St., CB2 3DZ, England
