2001:957 - DARDISTOWN 1, Meath

The site was exposed at chainage 16100 at the north-eastern edge of the proposed motorway in the townland of Dardistown during monitoring of topsoil-stripping carried out by Markus Casey, ACS, under licence number 01E0090 during groundworks associated with the construction of Contract 7 of the Northern Motorway Project.

The single pit was cut into the compact orange boulder clay. It was subcircular, 0.64m long by 0.63m wide, and extended to a depth of 0.12m; it had been filled with a compact dark brown-grey sandy clay that contained moderate inclusions of angular stone and occasional inclusions of heat-shattered and decayed stone, and occasional charcoal flecks. A radiocarbon date of 3710 ± 40 BP (cal. BC 2100– 1970) was obtained from the fill, dating the pit to the early Bronze Age.

No other archaeological features or deposits were exposed or identified during the monitoring and excavation and no finds were recovered. Consequently the site does not indicate the former presence of a large site within the motorway corridor. However, the fill of the pit contained occasional inclusions of heat-shattered stone and charcoal flecks, which suggests that it may be an outlying pit of a potential site, possibly a small cooking site or fulacht fiadh, outside the motorway corridor to the north.