County: Kilkenny Site name: RIVER BARROW
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 97E0447
Author: Niall Brady, for Management for Archaeology Underwater Ltd.
Site type: No archaeology found
Period/Dating: N/A
ITM: E 667135m, N 616751m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.298317, -7.015711
Test-pit excavations were undertaken on the bed of the River Barrow south-east of Ballinlaw Castle, Co. Kilkenny, as part of a larger Environmental Impact Statement that assessed the archaeological potential of a 17km stretch of the river targeted for extensive dredging works.
The goal of the excavations was to ascertain the nature of the riverbed deposits and their ability to retain archaeological material. Two small trenches were excavated by hand to a depth of 1m. The deposits consisted of a fine-grained mud, with shell accumulations in the upper 0.2m. No archaeological features or artefacts were recovered, but such muds could happily preserve any amount of archaeological material that came to rest within them.
24B Spencer Walk, London SW15 1PL
