1999:030 - COOTEHILL, Cavan

NMI Burial Excavation Records

County: Cavan Site name: COOTEHILL

Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 99E0644

Author: Judith Carroll

Site type: Fulacht fia

Period/Dating: Undetermined

ITM: E 659538m, N 814439m

Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.075628, -7.090240

A possible fulacht fiadh was found during the construction of the Cootehill Sewerage Improvement Scheme, Cootehill, Co. Cavan. The site is c. 200m to the east of the town of Cootehill and was identified during monitoring of the topsoil-stripping of rough pasture fields before the excavation of the pipe-trench. These groundworks exposed a spread of charcoal and burnt stone overlying peat and organic clay. The site is on a north-west-facing hill slope at c. 89m above OD in a slight hollow on the hillside. Some 1.5m to the west of the burnt spread was a modern bottle dump. The underlying geology is greywacke, a poor-quality slate/shale, overlain in this area by a yellow, silty, slightly sandy clay derived from its weathering.

Once it was exposed by topsoil-stripping, further excavation of the site was undertaken. The area of burnt material identified within the pipeline corridor was subject to hand cleaning, which revealed that the spread extended eastward out of the pipeline corridor. After consultation with Dúchas, an area to the east of, and outside, the pipeline corridor was excavated by machine to determine the extent of the burnt deposit. A baulk, 0.8m wide, was left in place between the two areas.

Excavations showed that the layer of burnt stone and charcoal, F21, covered an area of c. 22m2, of which about two-thirds lay in the pipeline corridor. Owing to the shallowness of the burnt contexts, topsoil-stripping had unfortunately removed a large proportion of them, leaving only isolated patches of burnt stone and charcoal within the pipe corridor. This spread sealed a shallow trough, F7, which had been cut into the underlying peat layer, Context 22, and contained abundant charcoal fragments, burnt stone and black-stained peat, F9. The stones within the fill and the associated charcoal spread were not of uniform size, most measured 0.05–0.1m in diameter and some were up to 0.35m, the larger stones being more common towards the base of the trough. The stones were almost exclusively fragments of local greywacke shale, with occasional quartz fragments. All of the burnt stone had undergone degradation due the heat and as a consequence was very friable.

The trough itself was roughly rectangular in plan and almost uniformly 0.8m wide, widening slightly at its western end to almost 0.9m, and 0.36m deep at its deepest. It was 1.75m long and oriented north-east/south-west. On the south-west side a series of large stones, F6, was encountered, lying against the inside edge of the trough in their final resting place after being tipped into it. The north-western edge of the trough was generally steeper than its opposite side, possibly owing to the protection offered by the dump of stones (F6). Adjacent to the south-east and north-west ends of the trough were shallow depressions.

Two post-holes, F12 and F15, were exposed to the north-east of the trough. The furthest, F12, lay 3.3m north-east of the trough, was circular in plan and measured 0.25m in diameter and 0.15m deep. Within the fill, F13, two stones, representing the remains of stone-post packing, survived. The second post-hole, F15, was 1.15m north-east of the trough, irregular in plan and infilled with burnt stone, charcoal and black-stained peat. It was 0.25–0.5m in diameter and 0.22m deep, and no packing stones or post-pipe were observed within the fill. No other cut features were observed during the excavations.

To the north-east of the trough the ground level had been raised by c. 0.1m and made more stable by the dumping of redeposited, yellow clay, F10. This material had been dumped directly onto F22, the peat layer cut for the construction of the trough.

There was no evidence for the location of the fire that had heated the stones. Excavation of the site and examination of the pipeline corridor found no areas of in situ burning or scorching to the peat outside or within the trough.

During excavation of the trough a curved piece of waterlogged timber 0.57m long, 0.12m wide and 0.09m thick was exposed. The relative thinness of the timber suggested that it may represent a disturbed piece of planking, incorporated within the fill of the trough, rather than a piece of branch or trunk. The timber was too fragile to be lifted whole. No in situ planking nor any structural element to the sides of the trough was present.

Samples from the fill of the trough are at present being identified before their submission for radiocarbon dating at Beta Analytic, Miami, USA. Samples were also taken from the earlier horizons of burnt stone and charcoal, F3 and F8, for radiocarbon dating.

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