2006:19 - BALLYMAVE, Antrim

This site was excavated as part of the recently completed BGE (Northern Ireland) gas pipeline. Trial-trenching had revealed potential archaeological features in the vicinity of a series of hollows noticed in the course of the walkover of the pipeline route.

In Trench A the sod was removed to reveal a dark-brown clayey topsoil, 0.35m thick, overlying the mixed compact brown/yellow/orange clay subsoil with numerous small, medium-sized and occasional larger stones. A 1m wide by 0.2m deep linear cut filled with compact dark-brown clay uncovered at the northern end of the trench proved on excavation to be a removed field boundary. A teardrop-shaped pit measuring 0.8m by 0.6m by 0.14m deep and filled with compact dark-brown charcoal-flecked loamy clay was uncovered 6m from the southern end of the trench. A single sherd of souterrain ware was recovered from the surface of the fill of the pit.

A roughly T-shaped cut 11m long by 1m wide was uncovered 2m from the northern end of Trench B. It was filled with dark-brown soil overlying numerous large stones and on first exposure within the test-trench resembled the passage and chamber of a souterrain. Excavation showed this to be a very large post-medieval land drain, 1.2m wide by 0.48m deep, extending beyond the limits of excavation, probably incorporated in a removed field boundary. A possible pit measuring 1.5m by 0.75m and filled with dark-grey/brown clay loam uncovered within the test-trench proved to be part of a small curvilinear ditch, 1.6m wide by 0.64m deep, with a stepped profile and filled with charcoal-flecked orange/grey clay below a compact charcoal-flecked grey clay. The only other archaeological feature revealed was a large, shallow pit with excavated dimensions of 1.5m east–west by 0.92m by 0.22m deep. It was filled with loose black/grey loam overlying a layer of medium-sized stones resting on the base of the pit.

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