County: Meath Site name: MAUDLIN
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 05E0162
Author: Rosanne Meenan
Site type: Burnt pit
Period/Dating: Undetermined
ITM: E 674868m, N 776795m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.735424, -6.865253
Test-trenching was carried out at this site at Maudlin, Kells (Excavations 2004, No. 1259, 04E0563), in April 2004 in advance of a housing development. Nothing of significance was exposed in the trenches. The developers were subsequently obliged to carry out monitoring during ground disturbance.
Phase 1 of the development consisted of house construction along the road frontage. This was monitored by Geraldine Dunne during summer 2004 and nothing of archaeological significance was exposed. Phase 2, construction of houses to the west of the site, commenced in January 2005, also monitored by Geraldine Dunne. During initial soil-stripping, two spreads of charcoal with burnt-bone inclusions were exposed, along with several other features that were less clearly defined. A licence was obtained so that the features could be cleaned up and recorded.
Three cremation pits were exposed, within 15m of each other. They varied in diameter between 4.5 and 0.5m and between 0.17m and 0.4m in depth. They were bowl-shaped in profile. The fills comprised charcoal-enriched soils with minute burnt-bone fragments. Radiocarbon dates will be available at a later date. It was not possible to establish a stratigraphic relationship between the pits.
Two other pits of uncertain function and date were exposed, along with a number of anomalous features. It was not possible to establish a stratigraphic relationship between these features.
Traces of 19th–20th-century furrows also survived.
Roestown, Drumree, Co. Meath
