Pit in Croaghonagh, County Donegal

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Located on a natural elevation at the NE end of Lough Mourne, immediately SE of a Neolithic cairn (DG086-002001-). Discovered and fully excavated in 2011 during an archaeological excavation at the cairn carried out in advance of the proposed development of a dam at Lough Mourne (Delaney 2013). This consisted of a subcircular pit (1.3m by 1.2m; D 0.43m) with a rounded base. There was evidence that the pit may have had a clay lining. A spread (7.8m by 6.4m; D 0.1m) of burnt material, interpreted as the remains of a bonfire, overlay and was centred on the pit, and a smaller burnt deposit lay immediately to NE. Charcoal fragments were identified as belonging to three species, oak, hazel and a species of the hawthorn/mountain ash family. A sample of alder charcoal sent for radiocarbon analysis retuned a middle Bronze Age date, 1436-1309 BC (UBA 19991) (calibrated to 2 sigma). An assemblage of flint quartz artefacts recovered from the pit and the burnt layer also dated to the Bronze age (Delaney 2013, 18-19). The pit is one of several Bronze Age monuments found in close proximity to the Neolithic cairn (DG086-002001-): An Early Bronze Age wedge tomb (DG086-002004-) was found 30m to W of the pit, a burnt spread (DG 086-002005-), located c. 25m to SE, was also dated to the middle Bronze Age, and a Late Bronze Age fulacht fia (DG086-002007-) was found c. 30m to NW. (Delaney 2013).

From the National Monuments Service (Archaeological Survey of Ireland) record DG086-002006

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Photo credits

Maker not stated on source page, en.wikipedia.org
Darrin Antrobus, Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
Maker not stated on source page, www.pinterest.com
Kenneth Allen, Geograph · Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
Maker not stated on source page, ph.pinterest.com
Wikimedia Commons contributor shown on the public file page · Public domain
Lisa Gallagher / Donegal Daily, www.donegaldaily.com
Kenneth Allen, Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0

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