What is recorded here

Half a metre of peat smothers stone walls and cultivation ridges on the lower west-facing slopes of the Ox Mountains. Bronze Age hands first cut the fields, then Iron Age farmers kept clearing and planting until the bog crept back over their work. The land did not abandon them in a day; it simply stopped listening, dragging human effort downward until even the enclosure vanished beneath the surface.

In an area of cutaway blanket bog, located on the SW-facing slope of a low knoll, on the lower west-facing slopes of the Ox Mountains. This prehistoric field system is associated with a large, stone-walled enclosure (MA031-049001-), a hut site (MA031-049003-) and extensive areas of cultivation ridges (MA031-049004-), all of which underlay c. 0.7m of peat. They were investigated over several seasons in a combined programme of survey and excavation (E000769) during the 1970's and 1980's (Herity 1981). It was not possible to plot the full extent of the field system, but several drystone walls were uncovered by excavation or traced by probing beneath the peat. A charcoal sample from beneath the wall of the enclosure yielded a Bronze Age date. The earliest walls were constructed directly on mineral soils, but later walls were built on peat, indicating that farming activity continued here for a considerable time as the spread of peat slowly advanced. Analysis of pollen cores suggest that there were successive phases of clearance and farming activity over the course of several centuries from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age, before the area was finally engulfed in blanket bog (O’Connell 1990, 261-70). Compiled by: Jane O'Shaughnessy Date of upload: 19 June 2018

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