2007

The September 2007 excavation comprised a 5.5m by lm trench across what appeared to be the remains of a house inside the main cashel at Caherconnell (a cashel being the stone version of a ringfort, an enclosed farmstead built during Ireland’s Early Medieval period, 5^th to 12^th century AD). Artifacts associated with the initial cashel occupation in the 10^th/11^th century AD included two disc-shaped quernstones of the rotary type, used to grind cereals, and an almost perfect iron arrowhead 8cm in length.

Finds of iron slag indicate that smiths were working iron within the cashel and a find of a stone mould for the production of dress pins suggests that precious metals such as bronze were being worked. Parts of a bone comb measuring 15cm in length were also uncovered. Such fine artifacts and the size and location of the site place it in the upper echelons of the Early Medieval social system. The house targeted by the excavation turned out to be medieval in date, a secondary structure within the earlier cashel. The house was rectangular, built of stone walls, a thatched roof, and with opposing doorways in the long, side walls. It was built some time in the 15^th century and possibly saw continued use into the 16^th or very early 17^th century.

2008/2009 excavation site at Caherconnell

2008/09

The 2008 and 2009 digs focused on remains within a doline, a natural sink-hole, located approximately 20m southeast of Caherconnell cashel. Excavation unearthed a wide range of archaeological evidence within the feature. The earliest activity within the sheltered doline was associated with a rectangular house defined by post-holes, with an internal stone-lined hearth. The house is possibly of Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age date. Prehistoric artifacts from the excavation included a fragment of a possible saddle quern, a sherd of Neolithic pottery, and thousands of pieces of worked chert of both Neolithic and Bronze Age type. Also recovered, though possibly reflecting slightly later activity, was a small assemblage of Middle Bronze Age pottery.

The stone structure partly visible prior to excavation was revealed as a circular chamber built against two walls of the doline. The chamber’s drystone walls probably originally rose into a corbelled stone roof, judging by the quantity of collapsed stone found in the interior of the structure. A wide entrance gap led into a 2m-diameter chamber that contained a pit filled with semi-articulated pig bones, and some scattered preserved grain. The discovery of a medieval bedding mortar at the base of the wall, in conjunction with a small assemblage of medieval artefacts and some radiocarbon dates, suggest a medieval date for the, as yet unique, structure. It may have been built by the adjacent cashel dwellers, perhaps as a store (explaining the wide entrance, bone and grain remains, and lack of occupation evidence or hearth within the chamber).

The final event revealed by excavation within the doline was the placing of human remains within the partly silted up entrance of the medieval structure. The remains comprised disarticulated bones of at least three individuals, largely those of an adolescent though missing most of the long bones. The bones were radiocarbon dated to the 15^th/16^th century AD, a time when a branch of the ruling Gaelic O’Loughlin family was living in the adjacent Caherconnell cashel. It seems likely that the remains were accidentally disturbed elsewhere, sometime after the 15^th/16^th century, and redeposited in the doline.

For more information on previous excavations at Caherconnell, see
The final report from the 2007 Dig

Article on Caherconnell published in the journal of the Royal Irish Academy

The preliminary report from the 2008 Dig

Caherconnell heritage centre archaeology page