EMAP_Progress_Reports_2009_2.pdf - The Heritage Council

Kerry
unique mix of architectural concepts from the native Irish and Hiberno-Scandinavian urban
building traditions.
A lintel from the stone-lined eastern entrance bore a runic inscription dating to A.D. 1050 or
perhaps later. Finds from the habitation deposits inside the main circular building included a
polished bone or ivory cruciform-headed pin of Scandinavian character, an
eleventh/thirteenth- century bone comb, an eleventh/twelfth-century bronze disc-headed pin
of Scandinavian type, three bone points, an antler ring, four iron knives, a line sinker and two
net sinkers.
O’Kelly’s secondary phase of occupation also comprised two animal shelters and four fieldwalls.
One of these small animal shelters (2m by 1.2m internally) was excavated 50m to the
north of House 1. The structure contained roughly-built low walls and revealed no evidence
for any trace of fire or associated domestic activity. The secondary field walls differed to the
earlier walls in that they were formed by a double line of upright stones.
After another accumulation of sand, the secondary occupation phase appears to have ended
for a period of time before a number of poorly built, possibly late medieval, structures were
erected over both rooms of House 1. Finds from these structures included an iron knife of
indeterminate type as well as animal bone, limpet, periwinkle and a fragment of an adult
human jaw.
Numerous lumps of iron slag as well as vitrified clay from the lining of a small furnace and
some fragments of tuyères were recovered in a scatter of charcoal at the western end of the
settlement. Middens of limpet and periwinkle were associated with almost every building on
the site from both phases.
Tillage appears to have been practiced during the earliest occupation phase though a greater
emphasis on stock-raising during the second period was suggested by the recovery of cattle,
pig and sheep bone from inside House 1; and fishing was also practiced during the second
period as indicated by fish bone and the net and line sinkers from House 1.
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