County: Down Site name: Townparks, Ballygowan Road, Comber
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: AE/19/053
Author: Colin Dunlop
Site type: Neolithic pits
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 745101m, N 868710m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.545925, -5.757248
Fourteen test trenches were excavated; within Trench 10 two small pits (0.6m x 0.5m x 0.15m and 0.5m x 0.4m x 0.15m) were identified. The pits contained two sherds of Neolithic pottery, a hammer stone, a polishing stone, three broken flint blades, a rough flint core, two flint flakes and a split flint pebble. As per the HED agreed methodology the trench was widened by 10m around these features. No further archaeological material was uncovered.
The two pits would appear to have been the remains of a transitory Neolithic campsite. The absence of additional features surrounding the two pits is not unsurprising as the topsoil in this area was thin and lies directly onto bedrock. As such this would have made the insertion of posts and/or stakes below topsoil depth extremely difficult. Therefore, it seems likely that evidence for any structure which surrounded the two pits, and any additional artefacts which may have been present, had been removed through agriculture ploughing in the intervening period.
The artefact assemblage supports this site being transient as no complete and intact worked artefacts were recovered. The flint blades, flakes, core, split pebble, and the pottery were all either broken or no longer of use, while the hammer stone and polishing stone would appear to have been convenient glacial erratics which were found and used on-site before being discarded.
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