2010:035 - Greenisland, Antrim

A programme of trial-trenching and strip, map and record of four designated areas was carried out in March 2010 in advance of improvements to the A2 Shore Road at Greenisland, Carrickfergus, Co. Antrim. The herring-bone trial-trenching carried out on the 1.5 km off-line section of the road corridor revealed relatively few archaeological features; those that were recorded generally took the form of infilled furrows or boundary ditches sealed beneath thin topsoil. This relative paucity can be attributed in part to the fact that the soils appear to have undergone significant erosion, creating a consistently shallow soil profile, generally 0.3–0.4m. The long history of agriculture in the area has presumably truncated a significant portion of the archaeological record through ploughing of the shallow soil.
In three areas significant remains were encountered: an isolated burnt pit containing several flints including a hollow scraper (suggestive of a Neolithic date), a silted channel contained charcoal deposits which have been radiocarbon dated to the 11th to 13th century ad and a horseshoe-shaped feature containing charcoal-rich deposits, from which prehistoric pottery sherds and worked flints were recovered.
Trenches located in the vicinity of the late medieval tower-house at Castle Lug did not reveal any significant archaeological features. It appeared that the evaluated area had been scarped down to geological deposits during construction of the adjacent A2 carriageway before being landscaped and built up to provide gardens for the residences along that section of road.
The two areas incorporating the silted channel and horseshoe-shaped feature underwent full excavation in a second phase of work (see No. 36 below).