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Habitation site in Brittas

Habitation site

What is recorded here

Two small knolls at the base of the Brittas crannog, three metres apart, became a human workshop during the Mesolithic before lake mud buried them and the Early Bronze Age built two huts upon the drowned memory. Sixty-seven chert flakes and deliberate brushwood layers suggest people stood where water now presses, shaping stone and laying wood across the wet edge. The place remembers hands more than bones, preserving the gesture of making a home on the border between land and lake.
At the base of the crannog two knolls, c. 3m apart, were utilised during the Mesolithic. The E knoll (diam. 8.5m; H 0.65m above water) was covered in a layer of white mud over stones with activity represented between both knolls by a total of 167 pieces of chert and flint including cores, blades, and Bann flakes. Brushwood layers spreading out from the knolls were probably deliberately laid down. The knolls were covered with lake mud (max. T 0.6m), which contained a few stray items but was largely sterile until a platform was established on the mud in the Early Bronze Age, on which two huts (ME005-088004-; ME005-088006-) were built. (Bradley 1982-3, 12-19; 1991, 7-9; O’Sullivan 1998, 52-3) Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 6 September 2018

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What survives
Recorded monument

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