County: Antrim Site name: TOOME
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: AE/05/92
Author: Philip Macdonald, Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork
Site type: Excavation - miscellaneous
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 698900m, N 890382m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.751713, -6.463671
A proposed residential development at Toome is located immediately to the east of the point where the River Bann and the Bann Canal flow out of Lough Neagh. This area formed an important crossing point of the River Bann and a number of archaeological sites are known from the vicinity, including the site of the now demolished Toome House, which dates to at least the 18th century and within the grounds of which the development site is situated. A number of archaeological features and a concentration of worked flint dated to the Mesolithic period were identified in a previous evaluation of the site by Robert M. Chapple (Excavations 2002, No. 29, AE/02/118). A second episode of evaluation of the site was commissioned by the Environment and Heritage Service: Built Heritage in 2005.
The excavation of a test-pit and re-evaluation of previous work at the site indicated that the site’s stratigraphy consisted of a garden soil, with a 17th- or 18th-century terminus post quem, overlying a complex ‘mosaic’ of intercutting palaeochannels, lacustrine silts, diatomite, fluvio-glacial and other post-glacial deposits. Within the test-pit a sequence of diatomite deposits were uncovered, extending from 15.08m OD to at least 14.18m OD (at which depth excavation was halted). A hollow scraper of probable Middle Neolithic date was recovered from the upper part of the diatomite sequence, whilst the possible tip of a flint borer of Late Mesolithic or Early Neolithic date was recovered from the lower part of the excavated sequence. These finds are consistent with the known date range for diatomite deposits in the Lower Bann valley, which accumulated between c. 6500 BC and the mid-third millennium BC (G. Plunkett, pers. comm.).
The only demonstrable evidence for Mesolithic activity at the site is a spread of a small number of redeposited flints of both Early and Late Mesolithic date recovered during the initial site evaluation. Given the small size of this assemblage, its presence is not necessarily indicative of anything more significant than casual exploitation of the immediate environment of the development site during the Mesolithic period.
School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast
