County: Antrim Site name: Little Ballymena: A8 Dualling, Area A23
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: AE/12/142
Author: Sarah Nicol
Site type: Prehistoric
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 731184m, N 889019m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.732080, -5.963092
This site was part of the A8 Belfast–Larne Road Dualling Scheme. The scheme was test trenched (above No. 17, AE/12/96) and areas containing possible archaeological features were expanded to discover the extent of the archaeology. A new licence was then granted to excavate these areas of archaeology; Area A28 was one of those areas.
Area A23 was situated just to the south-east of the Lisglass Road on a low lying piece of flat ground, within an undulating landscape. The subsoil was glacial till.
This area contained what appears to be a small, presumably temporary, stake-hole structure with a series of pits to the south and south-west and two spreads to the east. All of the features, apart from the stone drain, appeared to be contemporary.
The interior of the stake-hole structure was no larger than 2.28m east-west by 2.1m, this is very small and would further suggest a temporary structure. There were two posts associated with the stake-holes; originally it was thought that these could represent two different phases of the structure, but a lack of stake-holes to the north-west of post-hole C165 suggests that this was not the case and that all of the features in Area A23 were probably contemporary.
In order to try to better understand the spatial relationships between the stakes, and to look for any potential external structural stakes, a stake-hole depth analysis was undertaken; unfortunately it proved inconclusive.
Away from the structure were a series of small pits, post- and stake-holes; these were presumably part of the working landscape surrounding the structure. No significant datable artefacts were recovered from any of the features. Given the lack of post-medieval or medieval artefacts the site is almost definitely prehistoric, though only radiocarbon dating will be able to confirm this.
Post-excavation work is in progress and the full report should be available by the end of August 2013.
A8 Dualling, Area A23, overall site plan.
A8 Dualling, Area A23, reconstruction.
Northern Archaeological Consultancy Ltd, Farset Enterprise Park, 638 Springfield Road, Belfast, T12 7DY
