Pit in Ballynagallagh

A test excavation was carried out by Brian Halpin under licence No. 07E0115 in advance of the construction of a bungalow and other associated site works. Three test-trenches were enacted, one of which uncovered three small irregular-shaped pits. These pits were investigated; one contained a small piece of struck flint. An excavation was then carried out under the same licence to further investigate the pits. The three pits were irregular in shape with the largest being 0.61m in length by 0.35m in depth. All the pits contained minor flecks of charcoal. The single piece of flint debitage recovered from the original testing exercise was a yellowish-white flint fragment measuring 25mm by 15mm by 11mm and showed signs of being struck on three sides and exhibiting the remainder of the core from which it was struck. There are no signs of retouching or altering the piece, therefore it is believed to have been a fragment of discarded Neolithic debitage. No other finds were recovered from this pit or any of the other pits and no other features were identified, leading to the belief that the pits were the remains of a small, single-period domestic site (www.excavations.ie).