County: Offaly Site name: NEW GRAVEYARD, Clonmacnoise
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 5:58 Licence number: E000558
Author: Heather A. King, National Monuments, Dúchas
Site type: Habitation site
Period/Dating: Medieval (AD 400-AD 1600)
ITM: E 600912m, N 730669m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.326281, -7.986300
Excavation continued on this site with funding from the National Monuments Service (Excavations 1990, 49; 1991, 40–1; 1992, 53–4; 1993, 66–7; 1994, 74–5; 1995, 76–7; 1996, 93–4).
Cutting 13 at the north-west end of the New Graveyard was excavated to natural. Two main features together with occupation layers were uncovered this season. A further small section of the metalled road found in 1995 was excavated, together with a ‘revetment’ or enclosing feature. The road, running north–south from the Callows to the Old Burial Ground, is c. 3m in width. A length of 18.5m has been excavated, although it is known from geophysical work that it extends beyond the graveyard into the Callows. It contained over thirty layers, consisting of lenses of sand, gravel and peat. Previous work indicated that it overlay the alluvial peats which formed over the Iron Age features found in other cuttings and that it had fallen out of use by the end of the first millennium. The ‘revetment’ or enclosing feature ran for a distance of c. 8m east–west across the north (Shannon) side of the cutting. It may have linked up with the road but a modern grave has removed this link. It consisted of large boulders c. 0.8m in length, set end to end in a bed of marl, c. 0.7–0.8m in height, facing into the settlement site, with smaller boulders tightly packed in a bed of marl on the north (Shannon) side. The bank of marl extended for a distance of 2m towards the river but its full extent was not determined.
Two hundred and four artefacts were found this year. Material recovered from sieving the topsoil included a small quantity of post-medieval pottery, two armour-piercing arrowheads, lignite bracelet fragments, bronze stick-pins, a needle, a spacer, a buckle, decorative strips, offcuts and scrap bronze, a blue glass bead and cube, a Hiberno-Norse coin, bone pin and comb fragments, worked bone, iron knives, nails and other miscellaneous objects. Stratified material included a hone stone, a cross-slab fragment and a stone bead, bronze stick-pins, a composite bone necklace, a motif-piece, bone tools, lignite bracelet fragments and disc, a large range of iron objects including several knives and door fittings, crucible and mould fragments, mortar, slag and furnace bottoms.
51 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2
