County: Antrim Site name: BALLYCLAN
Sites and Monuments Record No.: ANT058–025 Licence number: AE/06/140
Author: Cormac McSparron, Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork
Site type: Ringfort - rath
Period/Dating: Early Medieval (AD 400-AD 1099)
ITM: E 710876m, N 877520m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.633696, -6.282616
An excavation was conducted at Ballyclan Ringfort, Ballyclan, Co. Antrim, in advance of development. Prior to the excavation, a geophysical survey was carried out by Dr Steve Trick and a topographical survey was carried out by Ronan McHugh and Sarah Gormely. The geophysical survey uncovered the presence of a large high-resistance anomaly in the central area of the site and the topographical survey revealed the presence of later cultivation features across the site. A trench 4m wide was excavated across the ditch and a trench 8m by 12m was excavated in the south central area of the interior of the ringfort.
The U-shaped ditch of the ringfort was c. 2m deep and 4m wide. There was a considerable amount of preserved organic material at the bottom of the ditch, which was heavily sampled.
In the north-east third of the trench in the interior of the site, a large quantity of stones, measuring in excess of 7m by 5m and c. 0.3m thick, had been deposited directly on to subsoil at the outset of the construction. It extended out of the trench into the rest of the central area of the interior of the ringfort. The presence of two large post-holes and two possible construction gullies running around this stone deposit may suggest that these stones were held in place during the construction phase, and possibly after, by a wooden structure. There was a gap, to the south, between these two construction trenches, through which the quarried stone was presumably carted. The stone spilled out of this gap for a couple of metres.
The stones of which this deposit was composed were interesting because they were all angular, well-sorted fragments of rock. The sorted nature of these stones, and the fact that they were deliberately broken, is suggestive of sophisticated quarrying, with broken stone presumably being sorted into different sizes, or grades, before use. This large stone deposit is presumably the high-resistance anomaly detected by the geophysical survey.
The earliest occupation activity visible in the trench excavated in the interior of the ringfort was represented by a number of roasting pits dug into the stone deposit in the centre of the site. In the south-west of the trench there were some later occupation and structural deposits. They were situated above bank material which had slipped down into the interior of the site. There were two stone footings for light, possibly turf walls, probably making up two sides of a subrectangular structure. The layers on the interior of this structure were dark and rich in finds, particularly souterrain ware pottery. The souterrain ware was plain and undecorated, suggesting that it dated from the 8th to the 9th century.
This phase was stratified beneath later, albeit disturbed, occupation layers which contained cordoned souterrain ware, suggestive of a 10th–12th-century date. Unfortunately there was no evidence of structural remains found from this phase.
Recovered from the topsoil at this site was some glazed medieval pottery, some decorated, pie-crust, cordoned souterrain ware and a few fragments of coarse pottery in the medieval, everted-rim ware tradition. These are all indicative of 13th-century, or possibly later medieval, activity at Ballyclan, which, unfortunately, was subsequently destroyed by agriculture.
School of Geography, Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen’s University, Belfast
