County: Dublin Site name: Ballalease North/Ballymastone/Portraine Ballisk
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 06E0027 ext.
Author: William O. Frazer, Margaret Gowen & Co. Ltd, 27 Merrion Square, Dublin 2.
Site type: Testing, prehistoric; early medieval
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 723755m, N 750198m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.487238, -6.135193
Testing was undertaken across the Ballymastone lands as part of the Donabate Local Area Action Plan in December 2007. Some 0.2ha of test-trenches were opened across (mostly boggy) greenfields, partly on the basis of geophysical survey (D. Harrison, 07R0177) and previous test excavation by Christine Baker (Excavations 2006, No. 562). Four ‘archaeological areas’ were identified, all quite truncated and positioned on higher ground. They are all likely to date from the prehistoric or early medieval eras (some areas appear to be multi-phased). The four areas include: a burnt mound/fulacht fiadh and associated ditches (0.45–0.8m and 0.6m wide); a ditch (possibly forming a circular enclosure as much as 50m in diameter; 1m wide) and a large (4.1m by 1.3m) pit filled with midden-type material; a circular ditch enclosure (28m diameter, 0.3–0.9m-wide ditch) with a nearby pit; a circular ditch enclosure/ring-ditch (12m diameter, 0.6–1.15m-wide ditch), a possible round house/small ring-ditch (8m diameter, 0.6m-wide ditch) and a burnt spread/fulacht fiadh near to where another 8m ‘hut circle’ had previously been identified (Baker, ibid.). None of the circular enclosures had geophysical scans typical of ring-ditch sites, so any such classification is tentative.
Several lithics were also recovered from topsoil and from the archaeology areas. The 28m ditch yielded several minute fragments of unidentified hand-made pottery. The 12m ditch yielded a single sherd of possible Leinster cooking ware.
A boundary survey of an irregular, kinked field boundary was also undertaken, but yielded no remarkable observations.
