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Roughan Hill Research Project

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

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 Farmstead 1 as well as trenches through various mound walls (ancient field walls) in 1995, four seasons of excavations at the Parknabinnia chambered 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 of Roughan Hill comes from the excavation of the Cl 153 chambered tomb where radiocarbon dates suggest that it was constructed fairly early in the Neolithic, possibly as early as 3600 BC. This monument was used for successive burials over the course of the Neolithic. At least two other, and possibly three, similar monuments occur in the southern Burren and it seems likely that these monuments were the ritual foci of fairly modest-sized social divisions such as lineages. 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, Jones 2003).

Figure 2: Mound walls in the Roughan Hill area

Figure 3: Slab walls in the Roughan Hill area

It is in the Beaker (c. 2400-2000 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 immediate surroundings which may date to this period as well. Set amongst these ritual monuments, survey has revealed a cluster of at least four contemporary farmsteads and a network of mound walls that divide the hill into small fields. Excavation of Farmstead 1 produced Beaker pottery and one sherd of Bowl Tradition pottery, while very limited excavations at Farmstead 2 produced Vase Tradition pottery. Lithic finds from two other farmsteads (5 and 7) suggest that they are contemporary as well. Exploring whether this was a time of population expansion has provided some of the impetus behind Olive Carey’s study of a contemporary landscape several miles to the north at Coolnatullagh.

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 (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 in the earlier Bronze Age led to a change in the strategies of the Burren’s farmers (Jones 1997), and this is something that is being addressed by Clare Hennigar’s study of Late Bronze Age hillslope enclosures on the Burren. 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 Beaker/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 farmsteads (Farmsteads 3 & 6). The masonry of some of the enclosure walls of these farmsteads is very like that seen on cashels and Farmstead 3 also contains a souterrain. Their plans, however, are nothing like cashels with Farmstead 3 being rectilinear and Farmstead 6 having both straight and curving sections of enclosure wall.

Seemingly contemporary with this post-Early Bronze Age phase, the site of the Beaker-period Farmstead 1 was re-used, possibly as a workshop area for the not-too-distant Farmstead 3. At the time of excavation, it was postulated that this re-use of the site had occurred in the Early Medieval period. Now, however, a recently-obtained radiocarbon date suggests that this phase of activity may date to the Iron Age rather than the Early Medieval period.

Figure 4: Beaker sherds from Farmstead 1, Roughan Hill (scanned & drawn by Sara Nylund)

    

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