What is recorded here

Hot water hissed through broken stone on the river bank, filling the air at Ballinter with steam and the smell of wet earth. People may have stood beside the trough, waiting for heat to rise through the water before pouring it over food or cleaning skin. The mound still holds charcoal from hazel and berries, marking repeated fires across centuries. What began as practical heat became a living boundary between human hands and the raw cold world.

Located in a level landscape on the NW bank of a canalised SW-NE section of the River Skane. Archaeological testing (04E1499) by R. Tobin on the line of a sewer-pipe identified three potential archaeological locations in Ballinter. This site is designated Ballinter 1 and was subsequently excavated (04E1462) by D. Fallon when it proved to be a spread of broken and burnt stone (dims 4.5m x 3m; max. D 0.14m) sealed by two layers of brown clays and organic silts from a shallow subrectangular trough (dims 1.5m x 0.7m; max. D 0.24m). This was just S of the burnt mound material and was filled with a dark brown organic silt with wood and charcoal inclusions. The only wood identified was blackberry/raspberry, but a sample of charcoal yielded a C14 date of 2870-2570 cal. BC. A sample of hazel charcoal from the mound yielded a C14 date of 1770-1620 cal. BC. Just SE of the trough was a thin spread (dims 2m x 0.85m) of ash on the fire-reddened subsoil. Two pieces of wood c. 3m E of the burnt mound and resting on the subsoil were separated by a brown organic sandy clay from a lens of ash and charcoal (dims 1.75m x 1.5m). (Fallon 2010, 10-12)

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