County: Kildare Site name: Mullamast
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 08E0100
Author: Liam Hackett, Headland Archaeology Ltd, Unit 1, Wallingstown Business Park, Little Island, Cork.
Site type: Bronze Age cemetery and possible habitation site
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 677153m, N 695682m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.006293, -6.850411
This excavation was carried out in advance of ancillary works to the N9/10 road scheme. The monitoring and excavation of a road building compound on behalf of Roadbridge Ltd took place at Mullamast prior to the commencement of works on the scheme. This site is located c. 1.5km to the south of Ballitore village, Co. Kildare, and was used primarily as pasture land, in an area of undulating glacial low-lying hills.
Two areas were cordoned off for excavation during the monitoring process: Area A measured 40m by 21m, Area B measured 15m by 15m. They were excavated between 4 and 15 February 2008.
Area A consisted of one burial, a crouched inhumation, in a pit measuring 1.24m east–west by 0.82m by 0.79m deep. The skeletal remains were in a very degraded state and covered with large stones, possibly dropped into the deep pit. Approximately 15m to the east was a deposit of waste pyre material with large pieces of charcoal and some burnt bone fragments. The pit measured 0.76m east–west by 0.62m by 0.07m deep.
The remainder of the features were subsoil-cut pits, with occasional small shards of prehistoric pottery and lithics in a small percentage of the pits. One pit contained a bronze socketed and looped spearhead, possibly from the Dowris phase of the Bronze Age. This artefact is currently undergoing conservation (March 2008) and further analysis will proceed once this is complete.
The presence of a burial, possible funerary-related activity and the bronze spearhead coupled with coarse domestic ware and basic lithics suggests a phased usage of this site. Further analysis and radiocarbon dating may shed some light on this sequence of events.
