What is recorded here

Seven metres of circular bank and a charcoal-stained hearth mark a household that lived beneath half a metre of peat. The Ox Mountains slope held a walled enclosure, cultivation ridges and fields where people farmed from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age. They cooked, tended soil and likely watched weather move across the valley before blanket bog erased the layout. The hut did not crash or abandon; it sank into the living ground and waited for machines to cut it open.

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 hut site was discovered during a programme of survey and excavation (E000769) undertaken in the 1970's and early 1980's. It is located within a large walled enclosure (MA031-049001-), associated with cultivation ridges (MA031-049004-) and a field system (MA031-049002-), all of which were sealed beneath c. 0.7m of peat (Herity 1981, 36-7). The hut site consisted of a roughly circular area (Diam. c. 7m) defined by a bank. In the interior were the remains of a hearth containing wood charcoal (ibid. 37). Radiocarbon dates, combined with analysis of pollen cores, indicate that there was farming settlement here over several centuries from the Bronze Age into the Iron Age, before the area was finally engulfed in blanket bog (Herity 198, 37; O’Connell 1990, 261-70). Compiled by: Jane O'Shaughnessy Date of upload: 19 June 2018

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