County: Roscommon Site name: Cloonfineen
Sites and Monuments Record No.: RO032-027 Licence number: 12E0434
Author: Dominic Delany
Site type: Ringfort
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 557343m, N 772524m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.700671, -8.645995
Pre-development testing was carried out on the site of RO032-027 (ringfort) at Cloonfineen, Co. Roscommon on 19 August 2013. The monument is marked as a circular enclosure (diam. c. 30m) on the first edition OS 6” map but does not appear on subsequent editions. Its site is on the crest of a north-south esker ridge. There are no surface traces of the monument. Testing was preceded by a geophysical investigation to establish if there were any sub-surface remains of the monument (McCarthy 2012). The results of the geophysics were relatively quiet and none of the anomalies appeared to correlate directly with the expected remains of the monument. However it was considered possible that some of the anomalies may relate to features associated with the monument and intrusive investigation was recommended. Five test trenches were opened, four of which were targeted on the sites of the anomalies identified in geophysics. Nothing of archaeological interest was found during testing. The geophysical anomalies were found to have had a non-archaeological origin mostly due to geological variations including bands of sand and gravel. No trace of the recorded monument or of ancillary features were found.
Dominic Delany & Associates, Unit 3, Howley Court, Oranmore, Co. Galway.
