Leagan Gaeilge   Text Version   Display: Zoom (-) (+)   View ( Normal High contrast ) Printer Friendly  A to Z  Sitemap

Roughan Hill Research Project

Figure 1: Plan of CL153, the excavated 4th millennium atypical court tomb on Roughan Hill (plan by J.Kenney & J.Beckett)

The Roughan Hill Research Project is investigating the organization and dynamics of prehistoric societies on Roughan Hill and in the surrounding region within a theoretical framework which has its roots in anthropological studies of social organization. Chronologically, the project spans the Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Early Bronze Age periods.

Research has been carried out on Roughan Hill since the mid-1990s. This began with an initial season of survey in 1994, the excavation of habitation site RH1 and trenches through various mound walls (ancient field walls) in 1995, four seasons of excavations at the Parknabinnia atypical court tomb between 1998-2001 (part-funded by the Royal Irish Academy) as well as the expansion of the survey and the excavation of additional sections through mound walls over the same seasons, a significant expansion of the survey in 2000 with a Heritage Council grant, and finally in 2008 as part of the Burren Landscape and Settlement INSTAR project – various specialist analyses (lithics, pottery, C14, etc), drafting of plans, and other tasks to bring the project towards final publication.

All this survey and excavation work has revealed a very detailed picture of a prehistoric landscape occupied for a very long span of time. The earliest evidence for occupation on Roughan Hill comes from the excavation of the Cl 153 atypical court tomb where radiocarbon dates suggest that, like other court tombs, it was constructed and first used in the early to mid 4^th millennium, but then unusually, the Parknabinnia tomb continued in use into the first half of the third millennium (Schulting et al. 2011). Some other difficult-to-classify monuments on the hill may also be Neolithic and some of the mound walls where excavation revealed particularly high underlying bedrock pedestals may also be Neolithic (Jones and Walsh 1996, Jones 1998).

Figure 2: Mound walls on Roughan Hill

Figure 3: Slab walls on Roughan Hill

It is in the Chalcolithic (c. 2500-2000 BC) and Early Bronze Age (c. 2000 – 1500 BC) periods, however, when Roughan Hill witnessed what seems to have been its busiest period. This is most visibly evidenced by the very dense concentration of wedge tombs on the hill and probably also by the many cairns on the hill and in the immediate surroundings. Set amongst these ritual monuments, survey has revealed a cluster of at least four contemporary enclosed habitation sites and a network of mound walls that divide the hill into small fields. Excavation of Site RH1 produced Beaker pottery and one sherd of Bowl Tradition pottery, while very limited excavations at Site RH2 produced Vase Tradition pottery. Radiocarbon dates from these two sites confirm that they were occupied in the centuries on either side of 2000 BC while lithic finds and field wall patterns suggest sites RH5 and RH7 are contemporary with the other habitation enclosures. Several miles to the north, Olive Carey’s study of a seemingly contemporary landscape at Coolnatullagh suggests that in addition to this being a time of heightened activity on Roughan Hill, it was also a time of population expansion in more remote parts of the Burren (Jones et al. 2010).

The mound walls on Roughan Hill were dated by excavating trenches through them and measuring the underlying bedrock pedestals. This method relies on the fact that the bedrock of the Burren is soft limestone that erodes and lowers over the centuries, but where the bedrock is sheltered by something such as a collapsed wall, the erosion is slower. The result is the formation of a ’pedestal’ of bedrock under the ancient wall that is higher than the surrounding bedrock. In general, the higher the pedestal, the older the wall, although there are various caveats and statistical ranges of variation that must be considered. Importantly, the present study is distinguished from other studies focused on measuring bedrock pedestals under glacial erratics by not positing a linear relationship between the height of the pedestal and time. Instead, two relatively ’fixed’ points are dated archaeologically on a pedestal height vs. time curve which palaeoecological evidence indicates should be non-linear (Jones 1998).

In the later stages of the Bronze Age, it is unclear what role Roughan Hill played. It is possible that over-grazing and soil loss earlier in the Bronze Age led to a change in the strategies of the Burren’s farmers. On Roughan Hill, there is a post-Early Bronze Age phase of wall building and habitation with field walls of this period generally fitting the description of ’slab walls’ or ’standing/slab walls’ which divide the hill into long, narrow north-south and northeast-southwest trending fields completely different from the fields of the Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age period. The stratigraphic position of these walls crossing over mound walls and sometimes running on top of mound walls as well as their lower underlying bedrock pedestals revealed through excavation, show that these walls are younger than the mound walls. On Roughan Hill, these field walls are associated with two habitation enclosures (sites RH3 & RH6). The cashel-like masonry of some of the enclosure walls at these sites and the presence of a souterrain at RH3 suggest a possible Early Medieval date, but a single Iron Age radiocarbon date from the possibly contemporary re-use of site RH1 means that an Iron Age date is also possible.

.

.

  Figure 4: Beaker sherds from Site RH1, Roughan Hill (scanned & drawn by Sara Nylund)

    

• Disclaimer
• Privacy
• Copyright
• Accessibility