%0 Object %T Archaeological excavation report, 03E1252 Cookstown Site 25 Vol 3 Specialist Reports, County Meath. %A National Roads Authority; Transport Infrastructure Ireland; Clutterbuck, Richard %D 2009-06 %8 %E Cultural Resource Development Services Ltd %I Transport Infrastructure Ireland; National Roads Authority %X The following report contains, in three volumes, the results of excavations and post excavation analysis at Site 25, Cookstown, Co. Meath, by Richard Clutterbuck for CRDS Ltd. Excavations at Site 25 were carried out in advance of the N2 Finglas – Ashbourne Road Scheme, on behalf of Meath County Council. The site was located in the townland of Cookstown, Co. Meath (centre point NGR 304860E 253000N), c. 1.6km west of Ashbourne town and c. 21km from Dublin. Site 25 was initially identified during a geophysical survey carried out by ArchaeoPhysica Ltd in advance of the Road Scheme in 2002. Test excavations by JCNA Ltd in 2003 confirmed the archaeological significance of Test Area 25, as well as the presence of a prehistoric ring ditch to the south in Test Area 24. The excavations at Site 24 and Site 25 were carried out under a single licence as an extension to the existing testing licence for Site 25 (03E1252). The excavation was carried out with a team of between 24 and 51 archaeologists between 15th January and 31st May 2004, resulting in the preservation of the site by record. Cookstown Site 25 constitutes a multi-period site with material and features from the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Early Medieval, High Medieval, Early Modern and Modern periods. It is located on a knoll beside a modern pastoral farmstead overlooking the Broadmeadow River to the south. The Middle Neolithic material consisted of several stray pieces of worked and struck flint (Appendix 10). The earliest archaeological features exposed dated to the Final Neolithic/ Early Bronze Age, and consisted of a poorly preserved crouched inhumation (Appendix 15). A pit truncating the burial produced a radiocarbon date of 2900-2250BC (Appendix 6), and contained a sherd of Beaker Pottery (Appendix 7). Beaker pottery was found elsewhere on the site, but generally as residual finds in later features. A series of pits around the site proved difficult to date, although a late Bronze Age radiocarbon date from one pit (Appendix 6) suggests settlement throughout the Bronze Age. The Iron Age phase at Cookstown consisted of corn drying kilns and a ritual ring-ditch complex. A series of intercutting Iron Age kilns on the site were found to contain barley and wheat grains and were radiocarbon dated to first and second century BC (Appendix 6). A double ring–ditch consisting of double ring-ditches and surrounding, although slightly later, burnt pits, appear to represent some form of Iron Age ritual activity on site. Detailed analysis of the ring-ditches material culture (Appendix 11 & 13) and plant macro remains (Appendix 19), combined with radiocarbon dates from the fourth century BC to the second century AD (Appendix 6) and the morphology of the features, provide some insight into the nature of Iron Age local ritual activity. Evidence for crop cultivation continued into the early medieval period, where a corn-drying kiln radiocarbon dated to the fifth to seventh century AD (Appendix 6) produced wheat and oats in addition to barley. The first significant settlement remains on the site, a ringfort, were built some time in the ninth century on the crest of the knoll. Only the ringfort’s enclosing ditch survived; any interior stratigraphy was either outside the area of excavation or truncated by cultivation. Extensive evidence for high medieval settlement from the 12th to 14th century did survive, in the form of three structures consisting of a forge, its workshop and a probable domestic structure. This settlement was accompanied by an adjoining garden bounded by substantial enclosing and drainage ditches and adjoining lane which appears to have been in use from the early medieval to the modern periods and still used to access the modern farm and lands beyond by several land owners. Considerable quantities of medieval pottery, the majority of domestic origin but including some imported French wares (Appendix 9), and metal artefacts (Appendix 13) were discovered, illustrating Cookstown’s place in the broader medieval world. The site continued in use through the late medieval and early modern periods, although the focus of settlement appears to have shifted outside the area of excavation. Pastoralism was the dominant farming activity in the eighteenth century Meath, and it is likely that the farmhouse and farmyard beside the excavation area were built at this time. Pottery and glass from this period were found in large quantities in the ditches beside the lane, and the medieval field boundaries were finally backfilled. Meath’s countryside was densely populated in the nineteenth century, and evidence for a cottier’s cabin and potato garden, discovered beside the lane leading to the farmhouse, provide a stark illustration of the physical reality of the severe poverty alluded to in the numerous documentary accounts of this period. The material culture of table and kitchen wares, wine and medicine bottles, personal items, musical instruments and clothes-making items add further detail to our understanding of consumption, day-to-day life in nineteenth and twentieth century rural Ireland. %G en %9 Text %W Digital Repository of Ireland