County: Sligo Site name: SHROOVE (Lough Gara)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 46:29 Licence number: 97E0209
Author: Christina Fredengren, Dept of Archaeology, Stockholm University
Site type: Settlement platform
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 570946m, N 798852m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.938188, -8.442478
Prior to excavation the site appeared as a round, flat, stone platform, c. 15m in diameter, with a broad causeway stretching from it to a former shoreline.
Upon excavation, the top layer was found to consist of large, angular boulders and flat stones, which, in order to have been utilised, probably had some form of superstructure, which for some reason no longer exists, either of planks, flagstones or sand. Under this layer was a layer of smaller, angular stones, some of them heat-fractured, which represents the floor of an earlier phase. A large number of animal bones were found within this layer.
Beneath this was another layer of large boulders, which was used to raise the level of the structure. Under this layer of boulders came yet another layer of fire-cracked and shattered stones and sooty soil, interpreted as another floor layer and apparently contemporary with the causeway.
Beneath these stone layers the remains of posts were found, on what appears to be the perimeter of the next phase, as yet unexcavated.
Among the artefacts found were numerous pieces of slag and a piece of a stave-built vessel.
S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
