County: Kilkenny Site name: PILTOWN
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 00E0402
Author: Patrick Neary, 24 Talbots Inch Village, Kilkenny, Co. Kilkenny.
Site type: Pit
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 645986m, N 622332m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.350655, -7.324995
During the monitoring of the Piltown–Fiddown Road Improvement Scheme on the N24 Waterford to Limerick road in south County Kilkenny, a large pit-type feature that had been created by using fire to crack the underlying rock was noted. An uncalibrated date of 930±65 BP was obtained from a charcoal sample sent to the Department of Physics Radiocarbon Laboratory in UCD, and the feature was excavated.
The site was oval, c. 7m by 6m, and was located near the top of a gently sloping hillock, on which the water-tower that serves the surrounding area is built.
There were no finds from the site, and the reason for its existence most probably was to extract the limestone rock for mortar or whitewash production, although further tests for mineralisation on the rock samples from the site may generate new theories.
