2006:833 - PALMERSTOWN, Galway

Excavations in Palmerstown, Athenry, Co. Galway, took place on 27 November 2006. A request for testing was made by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government in order to establish the nature and extent of any surviving archaeological remains after unauthorised works had taken place in the vicinity of GA083–069 and GA083–070. The field in which the two sites have been recorded has been ploughed and a number of parallel drains have also been inserted in order to reclaim the land. The ploughing revealed that the ground is composed of peat with occasional bands of decayed limestone bedrock.

Prior to testing, a field inspection designed to recover disturbed artefactual material located in the ploughed topsoil was undertaken. A walk-over survey across the target area was conducted on a 2m-wide grid spacing. An area measuring 50m by 100m centred on the national grid coordinates for the two recorded fulachta fiadh was delimited and 25 transects, 100m in length, were walked. Nothing of any archaeological significance was noted during the survey and no artefactual remains were uncovered.

A large tracked excavator fitted with a 1.5m-wide toothless bucket was employed to open ten trenches across the recorded locations of the two fulachta fiadh. The location of the monuments was identified with a Garmin handheld global positioning system with an accuracy of 65m. The monuments were recorded in 1992 as mounds with average dimensions of 10m by 5m. The testing did not identify any surviving trace of either of the two monuments.