What is recorded here

Rockfield holds a cremation pit where fire hardened the gravel walls and charcoal filled the base. An excavator cut through the south-western edge during house foundation work, but Michael Connolly recovered cremated bone and heat-shattered red sandstone cobbles from what remained. The charcoal rested above an unburnt quartz lump, suggesting the bones were lifted out before the pit was refilled.

Pit excavated by Michael Connolly for Aegis Archaeology under licence No. 00E0863, the results of which were summarised as follows; 'During the unlicensed monitoring of the digging of house foundation trenches for a private dwelling at Rockfield, Ballymacelligott, a large pit was partially truncated by the mechanical excavator. The pit was truncated on its south-western side, but around two-thirds of its circumference was still extant. The remaining portion of the pit measured 1.06m north-west/south-east by 0.74m and 0.6m deep. The pit was filled with three different layers of material: an upper topsoil layer, a middle layer of grey, silty clay and a lower layer of pure wood charcoal, 0.27m deep. Fragments of cremated bone were recovered from the lower two layers of fill, as were numerous heat-shattered red sandstone cobbles. The cream-coloured gravel subsoil that formed the walls of the pit had been baked hard and fire-reddened by in situ burning. The lower fill of pure charcoal appeared to have been redeposited, possibly following the retrieval of cremated bone, as it rested on a large unburnt lump of quartz, placed in the base of the pit. The pit is best interpreted as the site of a cremation, similar to those already excavated in the Tralee area, such as that at Rockfield I, excavated by Tracy Collins (Excavations 1999, 115, 99E0323)' (Connolly 2002, 148). Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of upload: 30 March 2022

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