BYPASS SOIL CARBON DATING TESTS STARTED

RADIOCARBON dating testing is taking place in Belfast on items of historical interest discovered on the New Ross Bypass dig.

A team of up to 35 people were employed to gather ‘evidence’ of prehistoric settlements discovered along the 14 km corridor.

James Eogan, Senior Archaeologist on the project for Transport Infrastructure Ireland, said the findings will provide people with a window into what life was like in rural New Ross and south Kilkenny thousands of years ago.

Mr Eogan said: ‘ The excavations are fully complete since last summer and they are in the process of analysing different samples of the remains of seeds and items found. It will take between eight months and a year for radiocarbon dating analysis in Belfast to be completed, so results should be known this August.’

He said no exceptional items – like gold bracelets of early Christain broaches were discovered – but shards of Neolithic pottery dating back 4,500 years were found.

‘Cumulatively the sites have given us a whole new insight into prehistoric New Ross and the lower Barrow valley. On road schemes we never find exceptional artefacts. Most of the showcase historic items people go to museums to see were found in turf cutting and drainage works in bogs in the midlands in the 1800s. It’s paradoxical. Roads are often associated with the destruction of archaeology but their construction allows us to make discoveries.’

For the initial assesment 15 people were employed surveying the site and during the major excavation works in 2010 and 2013, 35 people were employed, funded through the Road Scheme Allocation.

Two burnt mount sites from the Bronze Age - which are believed to have been saunas and cooking pits - were discovered. The sites date to the Bronze Age, between 2500 and 4000 years ago, and were found in areas of poorly drained land, one in Landscape and the other to the northeast of Lacken Hill.

The Landscape site was located beside the Camlin Stream and consisted of a low mound of heat-shattered stone approximately 10m in diameter. The mound covered a rectangular pit or trough which had been lined with split oak planks, some of which survived due to the waterlogged conditions. The sites have been identied as fulacht fia, cooking areas.

The timber-lined trough would have been filled with water which would have been heated by adding stones heated in a fire.

The site investigated in Lacken may be an example of a Bronze Age sweat lodge or sauna, Mr Eogan said.