County: Cork Site name: GREENFIELD 4
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 02E0432
Author: Ed Danaher, ACS Ltd.
Site type: Pit and Burnt spread
Period/Dating: Bronze Age (2200 BC-801 BC)
ITM: E 557589m, N 569657m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 51.877483, -8.615965
After completion of the testing programme carried out as part of the N22 Ballincollig Bypass Scheme in December 2001, the initial stages of topsoil-stripping began in March 2002. A monitoring programme was put in place to accompany this topsoil-stripping. During monitoring in the townland of Greenfield a small deposit of charcoal-enriched soil and heat-shattered stones was uncovered c. 0.5m below the sod. An area measuring 10m east–west by 10m was cleaned back. Apart from this isolated feature, no others were present. It was situated c. 780m east of a Neolithic house and a cluster of Bronze Age pits (Barnagore 3, No. 235, Excavations 2002, 02E0384), and c. 300m to the east of it was a possible Bronze Age house excavated by Donald Murphy at Greenfield 2 (Excavations 2001, No. 179, 01E0731).
The pit was cut into the boulder clay and contained two separate fills. It was subcircular, measuring 1m north–south by 0.9m, with a maximum depth of 0.17m. Although it contained a charcoal-enriched and heat-shattered stone fill, there was no evidence that this pit may have functioned as a hearth.
The primary and predominant fill was a loose, black, charcoal-stained, clayey silt containing c. 45% heat-shattered stones. These stones were mainly sandstone, with the occasional inclusion of quartz, and all had diameters of less than 0.06m. The deposit measured 0.9m east–west, with a maximum depth of just under 0.17m.
The secondary fill was revealed at the east of the feature and consisted of a small pocket of redeposited subsoil. This deposit had become slightly mixed with the topsoil, resulting in a brownish-orange colour, and contained occasional heat-shattered stones of up to 0.1m in diameter.
Dating evidence for the sites excavated within this section of the roadway in the townlands of Greenfield and Barnagore indicates settlement or activity dating from the Neolithic (Barnagore 3, No. 235, Excavations 2002, 02E0384) to the Bronze Age (Barnagore 2 and 4, Nos 234 and 236, Excavations 2002, 02E0383 and 02E0400, and Greenfield 2, Excavations 2001, No. 179, 01E0731). On this stretch of the bypass Bronze Age sites are the most numerous, and this feature, which lies between the cluster of Bronze Age activity at Barnagore and the Bronze Age house at Greenfield, possibly represents the remnants of human activity in a larger Bronze Age landscape.
Unit 21, Boyne Business Park, Greenhills, Drogheda, Co. Louth
