What is recorded here

Beneath North Main Street in County Kildare, a thin black ribbon of organic silt still holds crushed horn and torn leather. Those are not waste; they are the discarded skin of a busy life, pressed into clay by time. The street has been built, broken and rebuilt above them, but the dark line remains unsteady and alive under the foundations.

Archaeological trial-trenching (Licence no. 97E0299: www.excavations.ie) undertaken at No. 1A North Main St. revealed five layers of which one, the basal layer, was of archaeological interest. It consisted of a dark brown/black soft clayey silt which was organic in nature. This material generally existed in pockets/depressions in the underlying subsoil, but a continuous layer was also uncovered. The material had an average thickness of 0.1m and produced a number of leather scraps and cattle horn-core fragments. However, no features or structures were encountered, although a number of sherds of medieval and post-medieval pottery were recovered from the upper non-archaeological layers. The lowering of ground level by up to 0.3m across the entire rear area of the site and the excavation of building foundations were also monitored (Licence no. 97E0299 ext.). A number of sherds of post-medieval pottery were recovered from the upper layers and one sherd of medieval pottery was recovered from the silty basal layer. Compiled by: Gearóid Conroy Date of upload: 10 June 2011

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