County: Tipperary Site name: KILLORAN 16
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 98E0066
Author: Cara Murray, for Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd.
Site type: House - Iron Age and Pit
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 622295m, N 666941m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.753070, -7.669729
This excavation formed part of a large project for Lisheen Mines Development. The site was uncovered during the pre-development monitoring carried out by Paul Stevens (see No. 612, Excavations 1998, 98E0372). Killoran 16 lay on the eastern edge of a small ridge, north of Killoran House, with a series of glacial knolls to the east and more gentle, undulating landscape to the west. The ridge on which the site lay was composed of sand, gravel and mixed clays, forming a well-drained foundation in the immediate environs of the site, which was covered with a 0.3–0.4m deposit of topsoil. This topsoil had been ploughed, and the underlying archaeological deposits were truncated.
The house site comprised a series of posts forming a roughly circular structure 14.88m in diameter, with a central post. No pattern of specific structural posts was apparent. Instead it appears that the posts were inserted where possible to an appropriate depth. The main structural support appears to have come from the central post, and the posts of the outer doorway were load bearing. This doorway, which was facing south-east, was formed by four post-holes, with the partial remains of two shallow wall slots that formed a curved extension onto the front of the house. The doorway was a minimum of 1.05–1.09m wide and was 1.42–2m long across the porch.
Within the interior the partial remains of a series of smaller post- and stake-holes lay in the eastern area of the structure, west and south-west of the doorway. A 14C date, produced from the fill of one of the door-posts, returned a date of 180 BC–AD 425 (Beta-117551). No finds were associated with any of the features apart from a small fragment of burnt bone in the fill of the central post-hole. This was the primary phase of activity at the site.
The second phase of activity related to a large pit 2.85m to the north, which was 3m in diameter and 1.08m deep. It had been backfilled with redeposited boulder clay, and a small piece of worked brushwood was found at the base. This sample produced a carbon date of AD 890–1040. Despite analysis of the fill no indication was found of the use of this pit. In the environs of the site were the partial remains of four areas of burning, which may have been associated with either phase of activity.
The final phase of activity, which had been truncated, related to the subsequent agricultural activity on the site.
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