2006:167 - BUSHERSTOWN, Carlow

The site was excavated as part of the N9/N10 Kilcullen to Waterford scheme: Kilcullen to Powerstown. Testing, carried out under Ministerial Direction A021/024 on this site in 2005 (Excavations 2005, No. 74), identified the possible remains of a scatter of truncated pits and post-holes. These were noted as not forming any coherent pattern and no potential structures could be identified from the remains. The irregular shape and sterile fill of many of the possible pits suggested that they may have been tree-root holes.

An area of 5395m2 was stripped and many cut features were briefly examined. The vast majority of these were not of archaeological origin, being geomorphological anomalies, tree-root holes and holes left by rock removal for building stone and general agricultural field clearance. Several blocks of limestone were noted as erratics in the glacial till.

This field lay at the bottom of the hill on which the former Busherstown church stood and on which several prehistoric token cremation pits were found. One further outlying cremation pit was found on this site, measuring 0.3m in diameter and 0.19m deep.

Two other pits were thought to have been of archaeological origin. The larger of these was 1.35m long, 0.65m wide and 0.25m deep and had a black basal charcoal fill and amorphous fire-reddened clay above it. The other was of a similar size in plan but with a shallower depth of 0.09m. No artefacts were found in these pits, but medieval potsherds were found associated with similar pits further up the hill.

A shallow former stream channel (c. 0.2m deep) meandered along the western edge of the road-take zone in a north–south direction; it was c. 2m in width and was recorded in three cut sections across the road-take.

Unit 1, Wallingstown Business Park, Little Island, Cork