EMAP_Progress_Reports_2009_2.pdf - The Heritage Council

Cork
bronze button, bronze brooch, bronze pins, possible clay lamp, iron shears, amber beads and
fragments of glass beads and vessels.
Post- and stakeholes were also excavated in this deposit in the southern area though none
formed any coherent plan. A setting of stones which formed an irregular arc was identified
near the northern end of the black deposit and might represent one possible structure. Part
of the lower stone of a quern stone was revealed close to this possible structure. A rock-cut
rectangular pit (2.75m by 1.8m) was excavated at the eastern end of the black deposit and
contained crucible fragments and a fragment of flint at the bottom of its fill.
The black habitation deposit along the southern side of the forts interior lay beneath a stony
deposit which had been piled against the inner side of the inner enclosure to strengthen this
rampart. This stony deposit had then been retained in place by a stone kerb which ran
approximately parallel to the inner bank and about 3.65m from it for 7.6m along the southern
side of the enclosure interior. The occupation of this area appears to have been abandoned
shortly after the stony deposit slipped over the stone kerb. It was suggested by Ó Ríordáin
that the stone kerb may have been utilised as one side of a later structure of the later
habitations on the site as possible foundations of walls were identified running out from the
kerb.
The pottery assemblage is the strongest indicator that the main phase of occupation at the
site was during the later-fifth and sixth century A.D. A large quantity of Late Roman Amphora
sherds (250) imported from the eastern Mediterranean during the late-fifth to mid-sixth
centuries A.D. was recovered particularly within the dark charcoal rich deposit. The site also
revealed one of the very few examples in Ireland of a type of red slipped bowl (Phocaean
Red Slip Ware (A ware) (c. 500 A.D.)) which often accompanied these amphorae from the
eastern Mediterranean. Sherds of a possible red slipped ‘platter’ have also been subsequently
identified within the rich pottery assemblage.
A range of domestic objects including iron knives and nails, whetstones, perforated stone
discs, struck flint and an unusually small collection of spindle whorls (3) and loom weights (2)
were recovered in various contexts across the site. Animal bone was poorly preserved due to
the acidic nature of the soil but the meagre evidence appeared to belong to cattle followed by
pig.
148