What is recorded here

Half-buried at the western lip of the River Tolka floodplain, a crescent of broken, burnt stone still holds charred alder and nettle from 1620 to 1440 cal. BC. People heated water, dropped stone into it, and poured the scald over land or tools; later they dug pits beside the mound, one lined clay like a plunging pool, though no metal waste has appeared. The river took much of the shape, but the burnt heart remains sharp enough to imagine steam rising beside the road.

Situated on a slightly undulating landscape on the lip of the W edge of the floodplain of the meandering N-S River Tolka, which is c. 40m to the E. Centre-line testing (04E0488) by R. O’Hara on the Dunboyne link road (R157) to the M3 (excavations.ie 2004:1183) identified a spread of broken and burnt stone that was fully excavated (E003025) by R. Elliott in February 2006 as Bennetstown 1 (excavations.ie 2006:1507). A crescent-shaped mound of broken and burnt stone with a charcoal enriched matrix in two large sections (dims 10m; 5m; T 0.2m: 2.8m x 1.3m; T 0.3m) was interwoven with silt layers and partly washed out. Charred grains and seeds, including nettle and fruitstones of alder were recovered from the mound, and a sample of alder produced a C14 date of 1620-1440 cal. BC. The mound was associated with features, some pre-dating and others post-dating its construction. At the centre of the area was a concentration of stake and post-holes, some of which had been removed before they filled up with burnt mound material. Beneath the mound there were some small pits (diam. c. 0.5-1m; D 0.2-0.4m), from which environmentally rich samples were recovered but none could be identified as a trough. However, a large N-S modern service trench (Wth c. 9m) immediately to the E may have destroyed any trough. The largest circular pit (diam. 2.8m; max. D 0.6m) post-dated an alluvial layer that covered the burnt mound. It had a step (D 0.25m) covered in a charcoal-rich layer with burnt bone and charred wheat but mostly charred hazel and alder, occupying its E half. A sample of alder returned a C 14 date of 1050-1270 cal. AD. The topmost layer included burnt clay, which might have derived from a superstructure. Another post-alluvium pit (diam. 1.48-1.6m; D 0.4m) had a clay lining with frequent charcoal and burnt clay inclusions. It would have been watertight and may have functioned as a plunging pool from metalworking, but absolutely no waste from metal was found. A sample from this produced a C14 date of 1030-1230 cal. AD, but the fill was a grey silty clay with only occasional charcoal inclusions. Only a few flint artefacts were recovered. (Elliott and Ginn 2008) Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 3 November 2021

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