2010:334 - Cuillairbaun and Parke, Galway

Test excavations were carried out between 24 and 28 May 2010 in mitigation of the Athenry northern ring road. Eighty-two test-trenches were machine-excavated and one test-pit was hand-excavated. The existing site layout consisted of three fields under grass with stone wall boundaries. The trenches took the form of centre lines with regular offsets designed to test the potential archaeological impact of the road. No archaeological features or finds were found during test excavations and remarkably few modern finds were retrieved from the topsoil. A small number of linear features presented in the east of the site; some were bands of sand and some were modern cultivation furrows. The few finds that were recovered came from the east of the site which bore more evidence of anthropogenic activity. The area at the eastern end of Field 2 seemed to have been quarried in the past and subsequently levelled out. Substantial deposits of sand and gravel remained in this area. The area around a gate in the eastern end of the site yielded most finds, none of which were archaeological.