House - Bronze Age, Camlin, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Settlement Sites
At a site in Camlin, County Tipperary, archaeologists have been excavating the remains of Bronze Age buildings whose construction tells a subtly puzzling story.
The structures are circular, which is typical enough for the period, but their design is asymmetrical in a way that raises questions. The upslope, northern side was built using a slot trench, a continuous narrow channel cut into the ground to hold a row of vertical timber planks or posts, while the southern face relied instead on individual postholes. Whether the southern side was ever fully enclosed is something the evidence has not yet settled.
Two buildings have been under excavation, one roughly 7.5 metres in diameter and the other around 5 metres. Inside one of them, a substantial hearth was identified, its scorched area spreading so far across the floor that it comes close to reaching the southern line of postholes. That detail alone gives some impression of how the interior functioned: a fire large enough to dominate the space, with the inhabitants and whatever activity they carried out pushed toward the walls. Beyond the two principal buildings, the picture grows more complex. At least one further circular slot-trench structure is visible at the site, and two additional buildings appear to have been framed entirely by posts arranged around a central hearth, without the slot-trench element at all. There is also a palisade enclosure nearby, a boundary fence of upright timbers, and the curved, arc-shaped features within it, described as "C" rings, may themselves turn out to be building remains of the same type. The site, in other words, may represent a cluster of Bronze Age domestic structures rather than a single isolated dwelling, though the excavation was still ongoing when these observations were made.



