1997:018 - COOLNATULLAGH, Clare

Coolnatullagh is in the northern part of the Burren at the head of a valley that leads north-east from the Carron Depression towards Slieve Carran. In 1995 or 1996 a cairn and a low earth and stone bank were severely damaged by a mechanical excavator during farm improvement works. The cairn is within a field system of at least seven irregular fields which are delimited by low, rounded banks. This damage came to the notice of the National Monuments and Historic Properties Service in the autumn of 1996 and they funded a survey, in June 1997, of the field system and a three-week rescue excavation of the damaged portion of the cairn.

The cairn is circular in plan, 16m in maximum diameter; it stands to a height of c. 1m above the surrounding ground level. The eastern third of the cairn had been damaged and this area was fully excavated.

The surface of the limestone bedrock under the cairn was weathered and fissured. A dark brown silt, which underlay the cairn and filled the fissures, may be a palaeosol; no pre-construction turf-line was recognised. The cairn was an unsorted mound of weathered limestone in a matrix of dark brown peaty silt, ranging in size from fist-sized lumps to substantial blocks up to 0.5m in maximum length. Finds from the cairn included a small green glass bead, inhumed human and animal bone, cremated bone and recent (?) small animal bones. In those areas where the surface of the cairn was intact there was a 0.15m-thick layer of peaty sod.

A probable central cist was exposed in the western section of the excavated area; it had been disturbed (not in the most recent phase of disturbance), and a sidestone and a broken capstone were identified. The lower fill was a layer of cairn material 0.2m thick; it was overlain by a layer of black peaty silt in which were found the disarticulated remains of both feet of an adult inhumation associated with cremated bones, which may also be human. A poorly preserved sub-adult unprotected inhumation was found in the north-east quadrant of the cairn. The burial was unaccompanied and appeared to be oriented north-south.

Where the edge of the cairn survived in the south-east quadrant it was delimited by rough dry-stone walling, but this feature did not continue around the north-east quadrant. The edge of the cairn supported a vertical kerb of contiguous thin limestone slabs, incomplete owing to recent disturbance. The stones which formed the kerb stood on one of their short sides on the surface of the bedrock. It can never have formed a free-standing kerb as the stones would have toppled over. They were held in place externally by a concentric drystone revetment which had been almost entirely removed in the recent disturbance. It was formed by a drystone wall with a rubble core between 0.9m and 1.3m from the face of the kerb and survived to a maximum height of three courses (0.46m). It is not possible to say at present whether the kerb and revetment were added to a pre-existing cairn or if the whole monument was constructed at one time.

The remains of an incomplete coarseware vessel were found at the base of the revetment on the eastern side of the cairn. While the context is not absolutely secure owing to the recent disturbance, the pottery seems to post-date the erection of the kerb and revetment.

A section of low, rounded bank was recorded where it had been damaged 25m south of the cairn. The bank was a mound of limestone blocks placed directly on bedrock; it survives to a maximum height of 0.25m. Two phases of construction were identified: the first was a tightly packed dump of limestone defined by two vertical slabs on its southern side; the second overlay these slabs and was made up of larger limestone blocks which were less tightly packed.

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