What is recorded here

Thirty metres southeast of the great mound, a narrow trench preserved five metalworking areas from the first millennium AD. Area 5 held a shale-lined furnace pit, two ash spreads, a shallow gully and a cobbled surface that together yielded over 150 kg of iron slag. The repeated furnace bottoms suggest someone kept returning to heat, strike and reshape metal beside an ancient cemetery, while farms later erased most of the surrounding structures.

Five areas with metalworking activity associated with features from the first millennium AD were recovered in excavation at the Knowth cemetery of prehistoric passage tombs. This is metalworking area 5, located c. 30m SE of the great mound where most structures had been eroded away by later agricultural activity but these features were preserved in a narrow trench (dims 8m ENE-WSW; Wth 0.88-1.16m; D 0.21-0.41m). Towards the W end was a spread of ash and a furnace pit dug into shale without a clay lining. It was re-used several times as several furnace bottoms were nearby and the greatest accumulation of iron slag was in this area. There was a second ash spread c. 1m to the E and a shallow gully (L 3.4m) extended S from between the two spreads. There was a cobbled area further E in the trench, and over 150 kg of slag in total was recovered. (Eogan 2012, 169-70) True location: ITM (699671, 773392) Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload; 21 September 2020 See the attached illustrations: _1 Early medieval features, from Knowth 5, Fig. 4:1 _2 Plan of metalworking, from Knowth 5, Fig. 4:53

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