2007:1267 - Blundelstown 1, Meath

This site was located within Contract 2 (Dunshaughlin–Navan) of the proposed M3 Clonee to North of Kells motorway and was identified during testing by Paul Stevens in 2004 (Excavations 2004, No. 1188, 04E0428). Excavated between January and April 2007, it contained four cereal-drying kilns (one figure-of-eight-shaped, three keyhole-shaped) from which residual lithics and a sherd of Samian ware pottery were recovered. Prehistoric activity consisted of a sequence of multiple layers of soil with intermittent hearths, which survived intact for millennia within a natural hollow. Within these layers were c. 1600 pieces of worked or struck flint, four broken stone axes, at least two knapping stones, some struck quartz crystals, some chert tools and about a dozen sherds of grooved-ware pottery. Not all of the tools dated to the late Neolithic period; many were of much earlier date and included microliths and bann flakes dating to the early and late Mesolithic periods respectively, blades, scrapers and other stone tools from the early Neolithic as well as concave scrapers and arrowheads of the middle Neolithic period. These items were deliberately deposited alongside stone tools of the late Neolithic/grooved-ware tradition. Whereas many of the late Neolithic tools appear to have been fashioned from Antrim flint, most of the other tools seem to have been produced from local pebble flint.