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Meath
Johnstown 1, Co. Meath
Early Medieval Settlement-Cemetery
Grid reference: N76984047 (27698/24047)
SMR No: ME048-031
Excavation Licence No: 02E0462
Excavation Duration/Year: April – October 2002
Site director: L. Clarke (ACS Ltd.)
Johnstown 1, excavated in advance of the M4 road-scheme, was a multi-period settlementcemetery
and industrial site that was utilised for over 1000 years. Two areas of activity were
evident. The first was a succession of enclosures that respected a burial mound, which
originated in the late Iron Age, and defined areas of burial, settlement and industrial activity
until potentially the seventeenth century. The second area was outside the enclosure and
consisted of a mill-race ditch and the site’s final use as a cillín in the post medieval period.
The site was situated on the summit of a low promontory that overlooked marshland and was
located close to the River Blackwater and the border between Meath and Kildare.
A succession of three enclosures was centred on the burial mound which measured 15.5m by
18.5m. The mound was not initially enclosed when the first burials were placed there. One of
the earliest depositions included the incomplete remains of three adults in a charnel pit
beneath the mound. Burials associated with the mound were dated between the late fourth
and late seventh centuries (see Table A for radiocarbon dates). Following this, up until the
end of the tenth century, burials were placed to the south of the mound. Gradually, burial
activity moved to the south-east and then east of the mound between the final centuries of
the early medieval period until the end of the late middle-ages. Three hundred and ninety
eight inhumations were associated with the enclosures including 70 male adults, 72 female
adults, 41 unsexed adults, 18 adolescents, 111 juveniles and 149 infants. The majority were
extended, aligned west-east, within simple, unlined graves.
Three enclosing phases demarcated the cemetery, settlement and industrial areas (Fig. 254).
The primary enclosure was sub-oval and measured 59m in diameter. The entrance was at the
north and finds within the ditch included large quantities of animal bone, iron slag and iron
objects. The ditch was excavated between A.D. 432 and 651. The second enclosure (53m by
54m) had a more substantial ditch and two entrances were evident to the north and southeast.
Animal bone was again plentiful as was iron slag. A range of iron finds were present
including an arrowhead, a smith’s hammer-head and unfinished objects. Other artefacts
included fragments of souterrain ware and a copper alloy ringed pin. The second ditch was
dug sometime between the fifth and seventh centuries and was finally abandoned before the
end of the ninth century. The final enclosure was D-shaped and measured 47.5m by 61m.
The enclosing ditch was much wider and deeper than the previous ditches and had a
maximum width and depth of 5.3m and 1.8m respectively. Finds were similar to earlier
phases including large quantities of animal bone, ferrous metallurgical waste and a range of
functional and personal items. The enclosure was probably created in the ninth or tenth
centuries before it was abandoned sometime between the fifteenth and seventeenth
centuries. It appears that the succession of enclosures was created to accommodate the
expansion of the cemetery over many centuries.
Settlement evidence at Johnstown 1 survived as refuse pits, hearths, gullies, spreads and
cobbled surfaces that were distributed throughout the enclosures’ interior. Large quantities of
animal bone (both butchered and un-butchered), significant quantities of plant remains and a
range of artefacts (both personal and functional) also show that people were living and
working here throughout the early and later middle-ages. Dwelling evidence was mainly
dated between the ninth and fifteenth centuries but it is reasonable to predict that this later
settlement activity erased archaeological evidence preceding the ninth century.
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