County: Derry Site name: Brackagh Quarry
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: AE/14/136
Author: Cormac Duffy
Site type: Prehistoric settlement/ritual
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 675128m, N 890302m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.755103, -6.832877
In September 2015, during works in the northern part of the current quarry extension, a cluster of small features was uncovered in association with five rows of stone sockets extending beneath the peat in a westerly direction. Excavation resolved the small features to the south as pits and stakeholes while the stone sockets appear to be the remnants of five possible stone alignments. Artefactual evidence from the excavation was slight with just nine sherds of pottery recovered from a single pit. Specialist analysis of the pottery indicates a carinated bowl of early Neolithic style.
Along the southern extent of the excavation area a total of seven stakeholes and four pits were uncovered. The stakeholes were arranged in a rectangular formation with an open end facing to the northeast, possibly representing the remains of a windbreak or light, temporary structure. The four pits were scattered to the south and west of this arrangement and did not form a discernible pattern.
Charcoal recovered from the soil samples proved unsuitable for radiocarbon dating. A peat monolith was taken from the bog along the northern limit of the excavation. A sample taken from the base of the monolith was submitted for radiocarbon dating based on humic fraction. This material directly sealed the archaeological features. A date of 2285±35 was returned which, when calibrated to 2-sigma, gave date ranges of 405–351 and 301–210 cal. BC, thus giving the site a terminus ante quem of the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age.
This indicates that the archaeological landscape was abandoned by that time and possibly a few centuries earlier as the basal peat would have taken some time to become established. The archaeological features remain undated however, but the excavation proved them to be post-early Neolithic and pre-Iron Age and it is likely they share a chronology with similar sites in the region.
Excavations in the quarry in 2007 & 2008, c. 450m southwest of the excavation area, revealed evidence for small scale habitation during multiple phases spanning the Neolithic and Bronze Age. During that previous excavation, a piece of charred hazelnut shell produced a Chalcolithic radiocarbon date of 2389–2137 cal BC while the ceramic assemblage represented carinated and uncarinated bowls from the early–middle Neolithic as well as a single vessel dated to the Bronze Age.
This latest phase of excavation represents a continuity in the use of this landscape during the early–middle part of the Neolithic period.
Irish Archaeological Consultancy Ltd, 23-31 Waring Street, Belfast
