County: Limerick Site name: BALLYBRONOGE SOUTH
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 99E0324
Author: James Eogan and Damian Finn, ADS Ltd.
Site type: Ring-ditch
Period/Dating: Iron Age (800 BC-AD 339)
ITM: E 550341m, N 648122m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.582122, -8.732745
This site was discovered during the monitoring of topsoil clearance before construction of the Adare to Annacotty N20/N21 Road Improvement Scheme in July 1999.
Excavation revealed a penannular ring-ditch with a U-shaped profile. The ring-ditch had a maximum external diameter of 7m and a maximum depth of 0.5m. The pattern of silting in the ditch suggests that there may have been an external bank. The main fill of the ditch was a charcoal-rich silt in which fourteen token deposits of cremated human bone were found. One of the deposits contained part of a decorated bone artefact that is similar stylistically to a gaming-piece found in a cremation under a barrow at Cush, Co. Limerick. A copper-alloy spiral ring was also found in this fill.
These artefacts suggest a date in the Iron Age for the filling of the ditch and the deposition of the cremations.
The site had been partially destroyed by a machine-excavated engineering test-pit before archaeological investigation.
Windsor House, 11 Fairview Strand, Dublin 3
