County: Offaly Site name: BALLYKEAN BOG, Kilbeg
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 04E0800
Author: Sinclair Turrell, Archaeological Development Services Ltd.
Site type: Road - class 1 togher
Period/Dating: Prehistoric (12700 BC-AD 400)
ITM: E 649983m, N 720496m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.232505, -7.251341
This site was identified by the IAWU in 2003 as a single-plank trackway running south-east/north-west and was identified at 28 locations, both on the field surface and in drain faces. The site was traced for 918.61m as far as a low gravel knoll, beyond which the remaining production fields were considerably lower and contained no remains of the trackway. Four cuttings, each measuring 5m by 3m, were excavated along the length of the trackway and, in addition, a total of 26 sightings were recorded.
The wood in the cuttings was generally in poor condition adjacent to the field drains but was better preserved further into the cuttings, where the steep camber of the field ensured that it was buried under a substantial depth of peat. There were many gaps in the sighting record along the length of the trackway, but most of these were due to the different production field heights.
Typically, construction consisted of radially or half-split oak longitudinal timbers resting either end on transverse oak planks or longer birch roundwoods and pegged into place by means of a birch roundwood peg through a central square-cut mortise. This basic method is identical to that used in trackway OF-KLG001 (No. 1412, Excavations 2004, 04E0797). The surface of many of the longitudinal timbers was deeply grooved or split and the toolmarks on mortises were often degraded, giving the impression that the trackway had seen a long period of usage or exposure before being covered by peat. In some places pine longitudinals were recorded, notably in Cutting 3, where the roughly trimmed tapered timber displayed none of the mortises or other tooling of the oak timbers. The pine stumps that occur at the edges of the bog indicate that this material would have been ready to hand. In Cutting 2, one of the longitudinals was missing, although a transverse and peg showed that one must have existed originally. The great depth of peat overlying the wood here rules out the possibility that this is due to modern disturbance and raises the possibility that the missing timber was removed in antiquity. The trackway was a narrow construction and provided a walking surface ranging from around 0.2m to 0.6m in width.
If the lines of both this trackway and OF-KLG001 were projected eastward, they would converge on an area of high ground just south of the present-day Walsh Island. As well as providing a route from one dry land island to another, it is likely that the trackway also provided access to the resources of the bog.
Windsor House, 11, Fairview Strand, Fairview, Dublin 3
