What is recorded here

Roestown 1 preserved a fulacht fia dated 2460-2140 cal. BC, when people heated water with stones before roads or empires existed. The mound still holds broken stone and charcoal, while two troughs beside it keep the shape of that old work. Fifteen stake-holes beneath the mound suggest a frame now lost, perhaps for a roof, a screen or a warning to others. The M3 took the land, but the excavation gave back a place where heat, water and human patience met at the dawn of the Early Bronze Age.

Situated on a fairly level landscape. Archaeological centre-line testing (04E0415) by J. Dempsey of Testing Area 1, Contract 2, prior to the construction of the M3 motorway (excavations.ie: 2004:1336) identified burnt mound material, which was completely excavated (E003054) by L. Cagney as Roestown 1 in October-November 2005. A mound (dims 7m x 6m; H c. 0.1-0.15m) of broken and burnt stones in a black matrix had NE-SW and NW-SE ploughmarks of post-medieval date cut across its upper surface. The mound is probably associated with a N-S linear spread (Wth c. 1.8m; T 0.08m) of similar material c. 2m to its W. The linear spread was cut on its W side by a N-S drainage ditch (Wth 2.2m; D 0.7m). The ditch had two stony fills and produced flint debitage, a hollow scraper and a water-rolled stone that may have been used in polishing. A bone from the primary layer of the ditch yielded a C14 date of 1530-1950 cal. AD (BETA 214638) showing that the ditch is modern. The topsoil also produced a large amount of flint debitage and a hollow-based arrowhead, while a perforated bone bead came from a layer of redeposited material. The mound was just N of two flat-bottomed troughs, one circular (diam. 1.13-1.32m; D 0.13m) with a single fill of black silty clay that has burnt stone and charcoal inclusions, the other subcircular (dims 1.59m x 1.3m; D 0.3m) with two fills of silty clay that had varying amounts of charcoal flecking but no burnt stone. The smaller trough produced a C14 date of 2340-2260 cal. BC BETA 241302), while the larger yielded a date of 2460-2140 cal. BC (BETA 241303) from alder charcoal in its primary fill where a flint flake and core were also recovered. This places its use firmly at the beginning of the Early Bronze Age. There was also a round-bottomed pit (diam. 1.74m; D 0.54m) with a clay lining and a fill of black silty clay that may have been designed to retain water, and there was also a short, slightly curved, N-S gully (L 1.75m; Wth 0.55m; D 0.1m). There were 15 stake-holes beneath the mound, but no pattern was discernible amongst them. (Cagney and Ginn 2009) See the attached plan from Cagney and Ginn (2009, fig. 7) Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 21 April, 2022

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