County: Waterford Site name: SHANDON, Dungarvan
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 00E0442 ext.
Author: Stuart Elder, Eachtra Archaeological Projects
Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 625575m, N 593831m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.095800, -7.626745
Work on this site in 2002 followed on from work carried out in 2001 (Excavations 2001, No. 1241), in addition to excavations carried out by Emer Dennehy (Excavations 2001, No. 1242) and John Tierney and testing by Daniel Noonan (No. 1791, Excavations 2002).
Topsoil-stripping by bulldozer began in late March 2002 in Area 2, after a large spoilheap was moved to a different part of the site. Monitoring revealed a number of features, including a north–south-oriented curvilinear feature and six or more oval pits with charcoal-rich fills. Many of the pits contained possible traces of industrial residue, of iron or copper origin. A further length of the rectilinear ditch enclosing the area tested by Dennehy was exposed, exhibiting a width of up to 3.5m. A line of three post-holes along the inner edge of the ditch was also noted. These were evenly spaced and c. 0.35m in diameter; there was also a narrow linear slot-trench, just over 1m long, that terminated in a smaller post-hole, c. 0.15m in diameter. This is particularly exciting, as it may represent a palisade feature.
Various types of finds, including worked flint flakes, 18th-/19th-century ceramics, fragments of building materials, and iron nails, were recovered from Area 2.
Approximately 45m east of the extreme western site boundary of Area 2 lay a large sub-oval spread of dark red/brown, silty clay, containing numerous heat-reddened and -shattered stones. The spread measured 8m north-east/south-west by 6m and had an area of intense burning at the north-eastern extreme, filled by charcoal-rich, silty clay with highly ferric inclusions. These deposits were the western remnants of the medieval middens and pits excavated in autumn 2001.
Topsoil-stripping of Area 3 was confined to a 40m-wide zone immediately west of the larger quarry (now the Cork Marts) and a new roadway through the centre of the development site. Nothing of archaeological significance was noted in Area 3.
Post-excavation analysis is continuing, and specialist reports are awaited, but the evidence thus far suggests that the site was regularly visited in prehistory, possibly for seasonal fishing, and that a settlement was established here in the 10th/11th century by the Norse. This is backed up by the recent find of a fragmentary 11th-century Hiberno-Norse coin, in addition to finds from test excavations in the 1930s, including a 10th-century bone trial-piece with Hiberno-Norse motif, several iron knives, and the proximal end of a whale humerus.
Unit 2F, Dungarvan Business Park, Dungarvan, Co. Waterford
