2000:0891 - KNOXSPARK, Sligo

The site, in Knoxspark townland, was c. 1 mile from Ballisadare and 5 miles south-east of Sligo town. It was identified as a kidney-shaped mound during an archaeological assessment of a proposed landfill site. This identification was subsequently verified by test excavation by Cia McConway (Excavations 1999, 279–80, 99E0303). A rescue excavation was carried out over eight weeks from 9 May to 28 June 2000.

The mound was approximately kidney-shaped, with the two ends of the kidney composed of slumped mound material. The intact mound measured 15.5m (east–west) by 10m. It had a domed profile with a maximum height of 0.7m below the sod. The mound was composed of numerous lenses of decayed, heat-fractured stone and charcoal-rich deposits. The stone was mainly local granite, which had a high mica content. These formed three main bands of burnt material. No cuts or substantial features were revealed while excavating the mound. A number of lenses of very charcoal-rich decayed stone were noted at various levels, which could represent the location of informal hearths set on the mound. The mound overlay peat, 0.25m in depth. The upper surface of this peat included a thin, patchy deposit of grey/brown clay. This peat contained a lot of natural wood debris and tree roots. The subsoil below was a blue/grey clay with lenses of sand.

Immediately under the southern side of the mound a series of seven planks laid side by side was uncovered. This wooden surface, measuring 1.72m by 0.94m, was made up of thin, radially split planks, which did not reveal any evidence of joinery. They varied in length and width but had been carefully laid so that the shorter planks were at the sides. The wood was soft and in poor condition. These planks covered a subrectangular cut through the peat, which had very irregular sides and base. It measured 1.52m by 1.12m. The depth of the cut varied, but on average it was only 0.12m deep, with a maximum depth of 0.24m where the cut partially exposed the underlying subsoil. This cut was filled with very decayed, crumbled burnt stone, with the row of planks forming the upper fill of the cut. Four substantial wooden stakes were driven into the corners of the cut. These formed a rectangle 0.9m by 0.6m. A further two posts were driven into a shelf at the northern end of the cut. These were all half-split roundwoods with worked points. These wooden planks and posts are likely to represent the remains of the base of a trough. The shallow and irregular nature of the cut beneath them may represent an abandoned attempt to excavate a trough or perhaps an earlier trough that was subsequently replaced by a more regular, substantial trough built above this backfilled cut.

A discontinuous ring of thirty wooden stakes, spaced c. 0.3m apart, enclosed the mound. The diameter of this wooden enclosure was 15m. The stakes, which have been preliminarily identified as oak (Quercus), varied in size and in the depth to which they had been driven into the ground. They were all worked into a variety of different multi-faceted points. The woodworking has been preliminarily identified as that resulting from the use of Bronze Age axes (Aidan O’Sullivan, pers. comm.) Some displaced and fragmentary worked horizontals may indicate that this was originally a post-and-wattle structure. To the north and west this ring was positioned either exactly on or just inside the edge of the mound (where the mound had slightly slumped) and therefore appeared to act as a retaining kerb. On the south, however, the ring enclosed an open space rather than following the kidney shape of the mound. It may be that the primary function of this structure was to define and enclose a space for the activities that took place within it and that it subsequently performed the secondary task of retaining the mound.

No artefacts were recovered from the site.

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