Carrowmore Excavation 2019 (By Lynda Hart

By Lynda Hart

The Carrowmore Megalithic Complex is situated at the heart of the Coolera peninsula in Co. Sligo. The complex is predominately Neolithic (later part of the Stone Age) but also has monuments and usage dating to the Bronze and Iron Age.

In the late spring of 2019 a group of archaeology students from Sligo IT, led by Dr. Marion Dowd and Dr. James Bonsall, conducted an excavation at one of the Carrowmore monuments.

The monument was believed to be a barrow from late prehistory, possibly Bronze Age or Iron Age. There has been much speculation by both archaeologists and from the Carrowmore guides as to the type of monument that this site represents.

Göran Burenhult, the Swedish archaeologist who excavated many of the monuments at Carrowmore during the second half of the 20th century recorded it as ‘structure 8’ but did not classify it as a barrow. Martin Timoney recorded it as ‘No 13, Carrowmore II’ and suggested that it was a badly mutilated barrow. Others have suggested it was a ring or bowl barrow and it was even thought that it might be an ancient Bronze Age cooking pit or ‘fulacht fiadh’.

The monument is situated at the end of a large natural gravel ridge that runs through the complex at its highest point and it is to the SW of the central monument Listoghil (C51) in a large meadow. Field walls and boundaries have changed throughout several centuries and George Petrie’s 1837 Ordnance Survey map of the area indicates field walls running close to the monument but does not record the monument itself.

During a two-week period in May/ June 2019 the students excavated part of the site under the expert eye of archaeologists Dr. Dowd and Dr. Bonsall. The excavation was hugely popular with the general public but due to Health and Safety regulations, the general public were not able to enter the field and see the work up close. However, they could observe the work from the visitors area at point C which is on the gravel ridge and this allowed a good view of the students’ work.

Many interesting conversations were conducted on the complexities of running an excavation including the requirements of an actual dig and the need for excavation licences. It is a fact that you need very specific licences to use metal detectors to look for archaeological objects because it is illegal to use a metal detector in Ireland and there are very large fines for using one without a licence. Also, of great interest was the precise dimensions of the area to be excavated and the need for provenance at every stage throughout the project. All the work was carried out by hand from the cutting of the turf layer to the fine sieving and back filling of all the soil layers that had been dug.

The monument consists of a ditch, a raised area inside and a hollow in the centre. There is a band of stone within the excavated area. There were many finds within the excavated area around the monument. The dates of these finds ranged from the 18th to 20th century and included pottery and glass shards, clay pipe fragments, roof slate and other detritus.

Thirty-five lithics (artefacts made of stone) from prehistory were identified within the context of the monument and also from the area of later disturbance. The lithics were mainly of chert which is a type of flint found extensively in the area and especially on Knocknarea mountain.

The one thing that wasn’t found here was any bone. Bone is always a good find as it can be carbon dated and would have given a starting point for dating the site.

As there wasn’t any dateable material, Dr. Bonsall took some OSL samples from the lower levels of stone in the central area of the monument. OSL is an acronym for Optically Stimulated Luminescence which is a dating technique that takes a core of soil from an undisturbed area. In this case, samples were taken from the lower levels of stony material in the central area of the monument. This technique is used to date the last time that quartz sediment was exposed to light. The dates returned from these samples showed that they were from 5,740 ( +/-595 ) years ago which dates it to the Neolithic period. This is very exciting as it was previously believed that this monument was from the much later Bronze/Iron Age.

Dr. Dowd and Dr Bonsall hope that they will be able to secure additional licences and return with the students to excavate further areas of this monument in the spring/summer of 2020 and maybe find some answers about this intriguing site.