County: Louth Site name: BALGATHERAN 2
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 00E0943
Author: Kieran Campbell, for Valerie J. Keeley Ltd.
Site type: Pit
Period/Dating: Prehistoric (12700 BC-AD 400)
ITM: E 704773m, N 779136m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.751309, -6.411356
A number of archaeological features, mostly prehistoric, were recorded across the broad summit of a hill that looks southwards across the Boyne Valley, during work on the Northern Motorway (Drogheda bypass).
Area B
Eleven small pits, all <0.5m in diameter, extended over an area c. 20m x 13m. A total of c. 50 sherds of Western Neolithic shouldered bowl were recovered, with one pit producing rimsherds from three separate vessels. The small quantity of flint included one round scraper.
Area C/D
Fifty metres north of Area A, by the side of the Barnattin road, a pit, 0.6m in diameter, contained cremated bone. Two smaller pits 5m to the west contained charcoal-flecked soil. A large pit excavated into subsoil, truncated in the post-medieval period by a drain along the public road, survived as a D-shaped hollow 2m x 1m and 0.3m deep. The base of the hollow was metalled, with small stones on which several sherds of coarse Middle Bronze Age pottery were found. The hollow was backfilled with heat-fractured stones.
Area E
A rough stone surface, in a broadly rectangular shape (8m x 4m), was situated 23m north of the Barnattin road. No dating evidence was recovered.
6 St Ultan’s, Laytown, Drogheda
