County: Kildare Site name: KILL HILL
Sites and Monuments Record No.: KD020-021---- Licence number: 03E1570
Author: Elizabeth Connolly, for Irish Archaeological Consultancy Ltd.
Site type: Flat cemetery
Period/Dating: Bronze Age (2200 BC-801 BC)
ITM: E 695130m, N 723429m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.252687, -6.574418
Site No. 1 at Kill Hill, Co. Kildare, was identified during centre-line testing for the N7 Naas Road Widening and Interchanges Scheme (No. 930, Excavations 2003, 03E1265) in August 2003. The site was fully excavated in November 2003. It was situated at the base of a slope to the north of Kill Hill, a Bronze Age enclosure. It was identified with three others in Kill Hill townland, two of which were also Bronze Age ritual sites, which with this one formed a line running roughly east–west.
The site was first identified as a series of pits arranged in arcs to form two broken concentric rings. The pits were charcoal-rich and contained fragments of burnt bone. An area measuring approximately 30m by 30m was stripped of topsoil around the features and a circular ditch enclosing the pits was evident.
The ditch enclosed an area of c. 8m in diameter and was 1.2m wide and 0.4m deep on average. In the interior, seven pits were arranged in arcs to form two concentric broken circles with a maximum diameter of about 6.5m. The pits were shallow and contained burnt bone and charcoal and one contained a piece of misshapen glass, which, prior to specialist analysis, appears to be the result of some intensive burning. Burnt bone was also recovered from the ditch. At some stage the ditch was re-cut with a narrower ditch.
Preliminary analysis suggests that this site was a Bronze Age burial site, possibly the truncated remains of a cemetery mound or of a small flat cemetery. Further information will be available for the site following specialist analysis.
8 Dungar Terrace, Dún Laoghaire, Co. Dublin
