County: Limerick Site name: ASHFORT
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 13:76 Licence number: 97E0285 ext.
Author: Audrey Gahan, Archaeological Development Services Ltd.
Site type: Castle - ringwork
Period/Dating: Late Medieval (AD 1100-AD 1599)
ITM: E 554960m, N 651245m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.610586, -8.665019
An archaeological assessment was carried out at this site during the summer of 1997, before the construction of the proposed N20/N21 Adare- Annacotty road scheme (Excavations 1997, 110). The line of the road will remove approximately half of the ringfort, and therefore further excavation was required during the summer of 1998.
The monument is c. 30m in diameter, with a still extant bank measuring in places more than 1m above present ground surface. Five sections were manually excavated through the external, enclosing ditch. These showed the ditch to be roughly U-shaped and on average 4.2m wide and 1.5m deep. The remainder of the ditch was removed by a mechanical digger. The ditch was filled to a large extent by slippage from the bank, and no organic remains were uncovered. The only datable artefact from the fill was a sherd of medieval pottery, most probably of local production.
The bank was composed of redeposited subsoil, almost certainly upcast from the ditch construction. Within the bank, two whetstones and part of a rotary quern were recovered. Internal features consisted of a scatter of postholes, which indicated no apparent structure. Also revealed were the upper torso and skull of a small child, within a roughly cut, shallow pit. The cut of the pit was evident in the later build-up of material, indicating that the deposition belonged to a period after the use of the monument and was not associated with it. Most probably the child was interred here during the post-medieval period.
While no evidence of any real internal structure could be identified, either during excavation or previously during assessment, it may be suggested that this monument was not for domestic habitation. Further, the location of the medieval pottery, as well as a silver coin found during assessment, may indicate that the site dates to the medieval and not the Early Christian period and may be a ringwork rather than a ringfort. However, this assumption remains tentative as insufficient evidence exists to offer conclusive proof.
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