2006:403 - Ballyoan/Carn/Lisneal/Ardlough/, Derry

NMI Burial Excavation Records

County: Derry Site name: Ballyoan/Carn/Lisneal/Ardlough/

Sites and Monuments Record No.: - Licence number: AE/06/019

Author: Emma Donnelly, Archaeological Development Services Ltd, 30–50 Distillery Street, Belfast, BT12 5BJ.

Site type: ArdnabockBronze Age cist burials, cremations and burnt spreads

Period/Dating:

ITM: E 583097m, N 649471m

Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.596250, -8.249480

Topsoil-stripping along the length of the pipe corridor revealed a number of previously unrecorded archaeological sites. The most significant of these was a Bronze Age cemetery consisting of two inhumations and two cremations, each deposited in a stone-lined cist, and at least two pit cremations, all of which lay within a 10m2 area.
The two cists, each containing an inhumation, were exposed during the trenching for the water pipe in Ballyoan townland, and both lay at the bottom of a pit, some 1.5m below the present ground level. The smaller cist contained a child burial, the larger an adult. The child had been buried on the right-hand side, with the face turned to the east, in a tightly crouched position. The burial was oriented north–south, with the head to the south. The bones were in poor condition and many of the smaller bones such as those of the hands and feet were missing, as was the back of the child’s cranium, the result of the bone disintegrating over time. The child had a full set of milk teeth and the back molars were beginning to erupt, suggesting an age of c. four years at the time of death. No grave goods were recovered from this inhumation.
The cist of the adult inhumation underlay a small cairn, after which the pit had been backfilled with gravel and sand to ground level. The cairn immediately overlaid a large flat capstone, 1.48m by 1.1m. Its sheer size and weight, estimated to be in the region of one tonne, necessitated that it be carefully removed by machine, supported on slings. This cist was orientated east–west and had internal dimensions of 0.9m by 0.6m. An adult male (L. Buckley, pers. comm.) lay tightly crouched on his right-hand side, with his head at the western end of the cist. The body had been placed on a formal surface of white quartz pebbles with a piglet pelvis at his feet and a bronze dagger across his chest. Preliminary examination indicates that the weapon was a flat triangular dagger, 0.16m in length, and it had been hafted onto its handle (probably wooden) using at least four small bronze rivets. The dagger still lay inside its bark and leather sheath and fragments of the leather indicate that it had been decorated with an embossed swirl and line pattern.
The evidence suggests a burial or cemetery site of at least six individuals, child and adult, inhumation and cremation. The mix of burial type, while not uncommon, might suggest that the site had been reused over a period of time, and 14C dating should shed some light on this.
Initial analysis of the excavated cist burials suggests a date of the earlier Bronze Age, c. 1500bc, typical of the burial practice of this period in prehistoric Ireland and Europe.
Other sites along the pipe corridor include four areas of burnt spreads or fulachta fiadh and several areas of pits and linear features.