Structure, Kilcarrig, Co. Carlow

Co. Carlow |

Utility Structures

Structure, Kilcarrig, Co. Carlow

In a field near Bagenalstown that was earmarked for quarrying, excavators uncovered something easy to overlook on paper but quietly remarkable in what it implies: a rough L-shaped arrangement of postholes and stakeholes, the ghostly footprint of a structure built sometime between 3644 and 3523 BC.

That radiocarbon date places it firmly in the Neolithic period, an era when farming communities were beginning to reshape the Irish landscape, and when timber construction of this kind would have been among the most sophisticated building technology available. The postholes, cylindrical cuts left in the ground after wooden uprights have long since rotted away, are all that survive to suggest what once stood here.

The site first came to light in 2003, when test trenching was carried out ahead of quarry development in the townland of Kilcarrig, County Carlow. That initial work, conducted under excavation licence 03E1336, was enough to indicate something worth investigating further. A full excavation followed in 2007 under licence 07E0962, led by archaeologists from Headland Archaeology Ltd. The L-shaped alignment of postholes and stakeholes was found at the north-western end of a large pit, and the excavators described it as rudimentary, meaning this was not a grand hall or ceremonial enclosure but something more modest and functional. What makes the location particularly interesting is the company it keeps: close by lay a cluster of pits, hearths, and additional postholes pointing to sustained activity over time, and a Bronze Age pit burial was also recorded nearby, suggesting the area drew people back across centuries, perhaps millennia, for reasons that are no longer recoverable.

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