County: Wicklow Site name: BALLYNATTIN
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 98E0257
Author: Eamonn Cotter
Site type: Enclosure
Period/Dating: Prehistoric (12700 BC-AD 400)
ITM: E 722494m, N 671275m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.778595, -6.184330
The site was discovered during archaeological monitoring, by Sarah McCutcheon, of topsoil removal from a 14m-wide corridor designed to provide access and services for a new industrial park development by the IDA, close to the new Arklow Bypass. It appeared under the topsoil as a band (c. 0.4m wide) of charcoal and burnt clay enclosing a rectangular area.
Excavation revealed the enclosing element to be a trench ranging from 0.34m to 0.44m wide and from 0.04m to 0.2m deep, enclosing a rectangular area measuring c. 14m east-west x 8m. The trench was U-shaped in profile with near-vertical sides. The enclosure had rounded corners, and, although little survives of the east side owing to disturbance by a modern field fence, this side appears to have been curved rather than straight. The entrance to the enclosure was in the south side and was 1.35m wide. A circular cut (diameter 0.27m, depth 0.09m) on the east side of the entrance is likely to be the base of a post-hole.
The fill of the trench consisted of a soft, light brown soil with charcoal concentrations of varying densities and numerous patches of burnt, ashy material. Numerous fragments of burnt wood of small diameter were found, suggesting the presence of twigs, such as might have been used in a post-and-wattle fence. Charcoal concentrations were most dense at the east end of the south side and midway along the north side, where the trench was at its deepest. In these areas the charcoal layer was c. 0.05m thick and was underlain by a 0.1m-thick layer of greyish, silty soil.
The amount of charcoal and burning present suggests that the trench held a wooden palisade that burnt down. The presence of only one post-hole, that at the east side of the entrance, suggests that the trench may have contained a sill-beam in which posts were set that have now decayed without trace.
One sherd of pottery and numerous pieces of flint were recovered, and, while none of these was definitively diagnostic, they suggest a late prehistoric date, possibly Bronze Age.
Ballynanelagh, Rathcormac, Co. Cork
