County: Cork Site name: BALLINURE, Mahon
Sites and Monuments Record No.: CO074-130---- Licence number: 03E0060
Author: Avril Purcell, Sheila Lane & Associates
Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous
Period/Dating: Prehistoric (12700 BC-AD 400)
ITM: E 572343m, N 570515m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 51.886120, -8.401746
An area of prehistoric activity was identified during testing under licence 02E1666 (No. 297, Excavations 2003) in an area known as Zone C in the area of development. Features revealed during the excavation included a hearth surrounded by 50 stake-holes. Almost 1.5m west of the hearth a shallow, truncated linear feature, 2.4m long, may represent a support for a light windbreak structure.
Further west again, seven pits were found, three of which were similarly sized and clustered close together; two shallow pits were identified to the south of these and two more substantial pits to the north. The three pits ranged in size from 0.45 to 0.83m in diameter and 0.22–0.3m deep. A number of finds were recovered from them, including a possible quartz scraper, a fragment of a small flint bladelet, a flint flake, a type of flint plano-convex slug knife, two pieces of amethyst, one of which has a usable cutting edge, and a small sherd of possible Bell Beaker pottery.
The two isolated pits to the south produced no finds.
One of the northern pits produced finds of post-medieval date and the other produced two querns, one with a very pronounced saddle profile and the other with a concave profile and a struck quartz crystal. This pit was 0.88m in diameter and 0.5m deep.
AE House, Monahan Road, Cork
