Structure, Garryduff, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Utility Structures
On a gentle slope above the Monefelim River in County Kilkenny, the ground holds the faint outline of something very old indeed.
What survives is not a wall or a monument but a pattern, an arc of 37 post and stake-holes tracing a circle roughly twelve metres across, the ghostly footprint of a structure that stood here during the Early Neolithic period, somewhere in the region of six thousand years ago. A single sherd of pottery confirmed the date. What the structure was used for is less certain, but the evidence recovered from inside it points towards ritual rather than domestic life.
The site came to light in 2008 during excavations carried out ahead of the N9/N10 Kilcullen to Waterford road improvement scheme, the kind of infrastructure work that has, over the decades, inadvertently produced some of Ireland's most significant archaeological discoveries. Excavators working under licence found burnt bone among a number of internal features, suggesting that pyre activity may have taken place within the enclosed area. Around five metres to the west, two cremation pits containing human remains were uncovered, adding weight to the idea that this was a place associated with the dead and perhaps with ceremonies surrounding them. A possible cooking pit was also identified to the east. A second arc of post-holes, located approximately fifteen metres to the south, indicates a further structure in the vicinity, though whether the two were contemporary, or what relationship the scatter of pits between them might represent, could not be determined from the excavation alone. The findings were reported by Devine and Zimny in 2009 and subsequently by Devine in 2010. The site sits on glacial till, the dense mixture of clay and sediment deposited by retreating ice sheets, which here forms the sloping ground leading down towards the river.