2008:830 - Drumnacarra, Louth

Louth County Council, the Roads Service NI (Department for Regional Development) and the National Roads Authority are currently proposing a road scheme, the A1/N1 Newry–Dundalk road. The route consists of 14.2km of 2-lane dual carriageway with 5.7km of associated link roads from Cloghoge roundabout, south of Newry, to the Ballymascanlan interchange, north of Dundalk. The proposed route was tested for archaeological and historic remains during Phase 1 of the project, after which this site was determined eligible for further archaeological excavations.
The site was divided into three areas, the north-west, the middle-north and the east. In the north-west area the archaeological remains appeared to represent repeated episodes of burning. Here the archaeology consisted of a post-hole, two charcoal spreads and three pits. They were all discreet features as there were no stratigraphic links between any of the features to indicate either their chronology or contemporaneity. The three pit features would appear to be a series of hearths.
The area of the site designated middle-north contained a stratified sequence of archaeological deposits consisting of two deliberately scarped features in the natural associated with a large area of burning. It would appear that some sort of communal activity, either cooking or perhaps ritual, was taking place at this location. There appeared to be an effort to mask the burning activity by laying down various layers of redeposited natural on top of the charcoal within the cut. Later, the digging of a linear feature damaged the earlier features. This cut, both in orientation and dimensions, has all the appearance of an early medieval grave but no remains were recovered from its basal fill. However, attributes of the feature, including the digging of the berm or ledge at its south side, the orientation of the feature, the presence of a cairn of stones that slumped into the main cut and the possible stone marker socket, all suggest a burial. However, this could also have been a trough and collapsed stone discard heap.
In the east area, there were two features, an irregularly shaped oblong cut and a circular pit. They were both discreet features, as there was no stratigraphic link between either of the features to illuminate either chronology or contemporaneity.
The excavations found no evidence for a ‘ring-ditch’ or ‘ploughed-out barrow’, suggested from the Phase 1 testing. However, there was evidence of small-scale, multi-period activity across the site. The lack of artefacts retrieved from the site hinders close preliminary dating of the features investigated. It is hoped that more information may be gained when the radiocarbon dates from the various samples taken are analysed.

Editor’s note: This report arrived too late for inclusion in the bulletin for 2005, when the work took place.