County: Meath Site name: Garretstown 2, Garretstown
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: A008/008; E3061
Author: Stuart Rathbone, Archaeological Consultancy Services Ltd, 21 Boyne Business Park, Greenhills, Drogheda.
Site type: Ring-ditches, ditches
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 695951m, N 754828m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.534636, -6.552573
This site was located within Contract 2 (Dunshaughlin to Navan) of the proposed M3 Clonee to North of Kells motorway and was identified during advanced archaeological testing by Jonathan Dempsey in April 2004 (Excavations 2004, No. 1336, 04E0415). The site was reported in Excavations 2006 (No. 1567) when a small proportion of the site had still to be fully resolved. Excavations revealed three principal phases of activity at the site: a ring-ditch cemetery of the Middle Bronze Age, a series of large enclosures of Late Iron Age date associated with a large enclosure located immediately west of the site, and a large ringfort of the early medieval period that lay partially within the excavated area but must largely be situated to the immediate east. All three phases of activity represent significant concentrations of archaeology, but the presence of the Late Iron Age enclosures are of particular importance considering the general paucity of sites of this date in Ireland, and the manner in which it seems that there is continuity of settlement between the Late Iron Age and the early medieval period.
