County: Mayo Site name: FRENCHGROVE
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: E000996
Author: Conor McDermott, Irish Archaeological Wetland Unit, Department of Archaeology, University College Dublin
Site type: Crannog
Period/Dating: Early Medieval (AD 400-AD 1099)
ITM: E 532031m, N 763876m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.620297, -9.027361
During the summer of 1997 a newly discovered crannog was reported to National Monuments, and the IAWU was requested to carry out an assessment of the site. An area 8.5m long, 4.5m wide and up to 0.9m deep had been machine-excavated within the palisade, and as a result a two-day project to reinstate the site was undertaken and reported in Excavations 1997, 208.
A further week's work was carried out from 20 to 24 April 1998 to complete the reinstatement, recover artefacts and carry out palaeoenvironmental sampling. This involved trowelling and limited wet sieving of the upcast spoil and recording and protection of timbers.
The disturbance of the site had upcast 22 large worked trunks and five split timbers, three of which had extremely long tenons at each end. These timbers were recorded in 1997, and the records were updated in 1998. All of the trunks and two of the less well-preserved split timbers were reburied at the site, and the remaining three timbers have been put in storage on site, awaiting their removal for conservation.
The upcast spoil heaps were divided into transects and trowelled so that any patterns in the distribution of artefacts or palaeoenvironmental samples could be identified. All artefacts and animal bones were retrieved, as well as samples of stone types, burnt stone and dating samples.
The overall number of artefacts recovered was small; however, a range of domestic artefacts was represented, including whetstones, grinding stones and a spindle whorl, and fragments of querns, of a glass bead, of a wooden vessel and of a copper-alloy object. Preliminary analysis of the animal bone indicated a predominantly domesticated assemblage.
A dendrochronological date of after AD 733 has been returned for a timber from a disturbed context.
Belfield, Dublin 4
