County: Tyrone Site name: KILLYMOON DEMESNE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 29:66 Licence number: —
Author: Declan P. Hurl, Environment Service: Historic Monuments and Buildings, DoE(NI)
Site type: Industrial site
Period/Dating: Bronze Age (2200 BC-801 BC)
ITM: E 682633m, N 877095m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.635297, -6.720043
After being alerted to the existence of the site in a bog by the landowner, whose cattle were disturbing it, and following a radiocarbon analysis suggesting a date in the 10th century BC, an excavation revealed three mounds composed of alternating layers of baked clay and charcoal. From the mounds emanated a layer of ashy soil on which lay spreads of charcoal and charred barley.
Finds included two gold objects (a 'dress-fastener' and a 'sleeve-fastener') as well as a bronze socketed axe, a stone bead, saddle querns, spindle-whorls, woollen twine and cloth, hair (some of it human), and considerable quantities of coarse pottery.
Beneath the uppermost layer of peat, over which the ashy soil lay, was a 1m-wide band of wooden stakes running east-west across the site.
5–33 Hill St., Belfast BT1 2LA
