County: Sligo Site name: GRANGE EAST
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 98E0215
Author: Eoin Halpin, Archaeological Development Services Ltd.
Site type: Pit
Period/Dating: Prehistoric (12700 BC-AD 400)
ITM: E 563959m, N 834105m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.254514, -8.553086
This proposed development site of a single-storey house and garage lies some 5km south-west of Sligo town. Carrowmore and its associated megalithic cemetery complex lie to the east, and Knocknarea, surmounted by Maeve's Cairn, is to the west. The archaeological richness of the area can be readily seen from the amount of sites listed for the immediate vicinity in the Sites and Monuments Record. It was owing to this richness and associated high archaeological potential that an archaeological assessment of the site was recommended. This was carried out on 21 May 1998.
The house plan proposed for this site was tested by the machine-excavation of two trenches, with a further trench each for the garage and percolation area.
The trenches revealed that no recent ploughing had taken place as evidenced by the poorly defined plough horizon. There appeared to be little differentiation between the top and bottom of the horizon, with the entire 0.5m consisting of a fairly uniform, compacted, yellow/brown, stony loam.
Over much of the site this horizon rested directly on natural, which varied from a stony, light yellow/brown clay gravel to a light yellow/brown, gravelly clay. Some of the stones within the natural had rotted to a dark grey silt clay, which on first sight appeared to be archaeological in nature, suggestive of either organic material or, where the soil was particularly dark, patches of charcoal. However, close examination in each case proved the soil to be a natural phenomenon.
The exception to this was at the western end of the test-trench positioned along the foundation line of the south wall of the house. Here a substantially broad but relatively shallow pit was uncovered. It appeared to consist of a light grey, very compacted, silty loam. Its light grey appearance is likely to have been caused by leaching. This interpretation is supported by the discovery, in section, of a well-formed iron pan along the sides of the pit. Though by no means a precise method, in the absence of any other dating evidence the presence of an iron pan suggests that the pit feature may be very old, possibly even prehistoric.
Overall, the proposed development area appears to be largely devoid of archaeology, with the exception of the large pit. The remainder of the areas tested produced nothing of archaeological significance.
Unit 48, Westlink Enterprise Centre, 30–50 Distillery Street, Belfast BT12 5BJ
