County: Clare Site name: Site 201, Derrygarriff
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 07E0465
Author: James Kyle, Irish Archaeological Consultancy Ltd, 120B Greenpark Road, Bray, Co. Wicklow.
Site type: Clearance cairns
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 540278m, N 690961m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.966091, -8.889017
Investigations took place along the route of the proposed N18 Gort to Crusheen road scheme. The site at Derrygarriff (Site 201) was identified during the walkover survey and consists of six clearance cairns (A–F), varying in diameter between 3m and 5.5m and in height between 0.4m and 1.6m. These are probably of post-medieval or early modern date and are formed by the clearance of stones from the land during agriculture. The cairns are sub-oval or subcircular and are made up of small stones. There are traces of a kerb in Cairns A and D.
The testing methodology consisted of the excavation by hand of five 2m by 2m trenches as quarter-sections of the mounds. However, most of the clearance cairns were completely overgrown at this time and could not be found. Consequently only two of them could be tested as planned. It is likely that all of the mounds were similar in nature and that these two are representative of the character of those that could not be found.
In both cases, hand testing of the mounds revealed that they consisted of small to medium-sized stones, with no binding material of any kind. The stones gave the impression of having been casually cast on to the cairn in a piecemeal way, as would be the case with a clearance cairn. In both cases the cairns were sitting directly on top of the sod layer and topsoil. It can be concluded, then, that these cairns are of no great antiquity.
