County: Limerick Site name: BALLINCURRA (BGE 3/76/3)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 02E0505
Author: Kate Taylor and Liam McKinstry, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd.
Site type: Pit
Period/Dating: Prehistoric (12700 BC-AD 400)
ITM: E 558749m, N 634729m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.462452, -8.607026
This site was examined as part of Bord Gáis Éireann’s Pipeline to the West. It lay on fairly level pastureland, 95m to the north, and uphill, of a small stream that functioned as a field boundary. Five features were excavated: a large subrectangular pit, two medium-sized pits and two small spreads of material, similar to the pit fills.
The large subrectangular pit measured 2.5m by 1.4m and was 0.45m deep. The two medium-sized pits were oval and measured 1.52m by 0.72m by 0.27m deep and 2.84m by 0.94m by 0.3m deep. The two spreads, which lay in natural depressions between the pits, had irregular oval shapes and were no more than 0.15m thick.
The pit fills and the spread materials were generally dark grey or black, sandy silts with orange/brown mottling and inclusions of charcoal and burnt and unburnt stone. The only finds recovered, from the large subrectangular pit, were a small number of pieces of animal bone, one of which may show butchery marks.
The excavated deposits, with high quantities of burnt stone and fragments of charcoal, are typical of material from burnt spreads or fulachta fiadh. It is likely that the pits represent similar activities, and it is possible that a greater spread of surface material was removed by later agricultural activity. In the absence of absolute dating (radiocarbon dates are anticipated), it is considered likely that site dates to the Bronze Age or the Iron Age.
2 Killiney View, Albert Road Lower, Glenageary, Co. Dublin
