AR01055_EMAP_Gazetteer_of_Sites_4-2_10.pdf - The Heritage ...

Kerry
1996a, 1999b, 2000). This latter feature cut through postholes and a metalworking deposit
and contained moderate inclusions of charcoal, burnt animal bone fragments and iron slag
(Sheehan 2000, 4).
The site appears to have continued to develop in the later sixth and seventh century. After
the main period of metalworking activity, the area appears to have been backfilled with a
large dump of material which included B and E ware pottery, slag, whetstones, spindle
whorls, corroded iron objects and burnt animal bone. This dumped material also overlay a
number of the structural features and appears to indicate the abandonment of the site
(Sheehan 1995b, 1999b). Two dates from contexts overlying the earliest features in the
domestic sector of the site produced a combined sixth to eighth century radiocarbon date
range when calibrated to 2 sigma (Sheehan 2009, 196). A number of burials, most noticeably
three to the west of the wooden church, had a different orientation to the burials aligned with
the wooden church. This could either suggest that they were aligned with a second
unexcavated later church or that they were perhaps orientated on the ‘corner-post’ shrine.
This ‘corner post’ shrine was built directly above the ‘special’ lintel grave. It represented a
structural elaboration of this grave and involved the construction of a roughly square stone
box shrine - 1.9m x 1.9m and c. 0.8m high - formed of large sandstone slabs with pillars
surviving at three of its corners. The excavation demonstrated that the ‘corner post’ shrine
marked the location of the ‘special’ grave beneath but did not contain any translated remains.
Based on this evidence Sheehan (2009, 199-200) has suggested that ‘corner-post’ shrines of
this type in Kerry date to ‘between the period when the ‘special’ grave was the primary focus
of devotion’, which at Caherlehillan appears to have been as early as the later 5 th and 6 th
centuries, and ‘the period when the cult of relics led to the construction of formal reliquary
shrines’ in the 8 th century, such as ‘A-roofed’, or ‘gable-shaped’, structures.
The ecclesiastical site appears to have fallen out of use by the late eighth century, shortly
after the ‘corner post’ shrine was built. Two Edward I coins from a pit in the centre of the site
indicate intermittent medieval activity before its re-use as an early modern ceallunach or
children’s burial ground. The ceallunach consisted of a large number of small graves, many
producing fragments of human bone and associated with water-rolled quartz pebbles. A
number of distinct phases of burial were identified: the earliest contained both stone-lined
and earth-cut graves, the second phase featured stone-lined examples, while the third and
most recent level of burials contained earth-cut graves with some remains of coffins. The
modern road boundary flanking the northern side of the site was found to contain a child’s
cranium, indicating that the road’s construction disturbed the ceallúnach in this area. The
ceallunach fell out of use by the later nineteenth century.
Finds from the site were mainly recovered from the domestic sectors in the central area and
particularly within the southwestern quadrant of the enclosure and included fragments of
stone spindle whorls, perforated stone discs, whet-, hone- and rubbing-stones, corroded iron
objects and fragments, a possible ring-pin fragment, glass beads, flint, large quantities of
imported E and B ware pottery, two late thirteenth-century Edward I coins, crucibles, iron
slag and animal bone. Shroud pins, nails and buttons were found associated with a number
of the early modern ceallunach burials and one of these later graves also re-used a fragment
of an early medieval cross-slab bearing an encircled cross-of-arcs and a stylised bird.
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