County: Galway Site name: CROSS
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: A024/3.5
Author: Aisling Collins, CRDS Ltd.
Site type: Barrow - ring-barrow
Period/Dating: Bronze Age (2200 BC-801 BC)
ITM: E 564733m, N 725473m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.278416, -8.528795
Assessment on the proposed route of the N6 Galway–Ballinasloe road scheme (Contract 3) was carried out at Cross townland under ministerial directions. The work was commissioned by Galway County Council National Roads Design Office and sponsored by the National Roads Authority. The site is located on a hillside with a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside. The site was used in the past as pastureland, with the surrounding lower ground being very boggy and waterlogged. Some marsh land is visible to the west from the hill.
An unclassified earthwork, SMR 98:84, is located 1km to the east of the subject area. A burnt-mound site, A024/3.3 (see No. 569, Excavations 2005), in the townland of Caraun More, is c. 500m to the west. During monitoring of 812m2 of trenches in the subject area, a ring-barrow was exposed. This was later identified as possibly being Bronze Age in date. Three human skeletons were also revealed during testing, two within the barrow, roughly oriented east–west, and one disturbed burial immediately outside the barrow in which the orientation and presence of a grave-cut could not be determined at this stage. It may have been disturbed due to cultivation, as furrows were found running across the site. The full extent of the barrow and its associated features was exposed and recorded.
The site appears to contain three phases of activity: the barrow of possible Bronze Age date, three inhumations, one of which may post-date the barrow, and modern agricultural activity in the form of furrows.
Unit 4, Dundrum Business Park, Dundrum, Dublin 14
