1997:501 - DER241, 243, 314 AND 316, DERRYVILLE BOG, Killoran, Tipperary

It appears that the accumulation of the mound ma-terial of DER240 (Excavations 1997, No. 500) began to prevent the flow of water down the slope on which the site lay. This allowed peat to form, in which two trackways (DER241 and DER243) approached the western side of the site. The northernmost of these (DER241) was a 13m-long trackway which ran in and onto the top of the fulacht fiadh (DER 240) from the west, and was up to 4m wide in places.

The trackway began in the marginal forest on the edge of the bog and some of the nearby trees collapsed directly on top of the site. These included a number of 100- to 120-year-old oaks and an ash which was 160 years old, one of the oaks producing a date of 1547±9 BC (Q9542). A number of younger timbers of alder (50 years of growth rings) and willow (less than 20 years of growth rings) indicate that conditions got wetter. It is in that twenty years or so just before the trees collapsed that the trackway must have been built.

The method of construction was not uniform across the length of the track. Where there was a substructure present, mainly on the track’s western side, it contained a mixture of alder and oak, with ash, birch, crab-apple, hazel, holly, rowan and willow being added as the track moved east. The superstructure started as alder, hazel, ash and oak, with the other species being present in the eastern end of the track. The western part of the track contained alder and oak, with ash and hazel also present in the superstructure; as the track moved east, birch, crab-apple, holly, rowan and willow were identified in both levels. All these wood species would have been available in the immediate vicinity of the site. This implies that no great planning went into the construction of the site.

Just south of this a 7m-long trackway (DER243) was constructed from the western margin of the bog across the mound of DER240. This track had a mixed foundation which was overlain by roundwoods and was over 3.5m wide in places; the same wood species were used as in DER241. A 9799BC (Q9543) date was obtained from an oak used in the substructure of DER241 which overlay the western margin of DER240.

Running east into the bog from the dry area created by the top of the fulacht fiadh mound was an 18m-long trackway constructed when peat had formed over the eastern side of the mound. Examination of this trackway took place along most of its surviving length, although three sections (20% of the total length) had been removed by Bord na Móna field drains. This showed a variation in construction methods, increasing the depth of the site from the west to the east, where it ended in a five-layer-deep platform.

The upper (walking) surface of the track was present all the way across from the western side to the platform at the eastern end of the track. This was made up of dense bundles of roundwoods and brushwoods laid as transverses which were occasionally pegged down. In the central part of the track longitudinal poles were laid below the bundles of brushwood to give it added strength. The track was more complex than a simple two-layer track, with a substructure of longitudinals and a superstructure of transverses. Some of the transverses were below one longitudinal but above another. This in turn gave way to larger roundwood transverses. This formed the third layer of the platform, overlying a brushwood foundation and a hurdle, which produced a date of 370±5 cal. BC (Beta-111376). The top of the platform was made up of another dump of material and another hurdle. Wood species used on this site include alder, ash, birch, crab-apple, hazel, holly, oak, rowan, willow and yew.

Ten metres south of this group of sites another deposit of burnt mound material (DER316) was found over an area measuring 4.2m (north–south) by 2.9m (east–west) and up to 0.2m deep. No other features could be found associated with this deposit.

Minorco Lisheen Ltd, Killoran, Moyne, Co. Tipperary