Excavation - miscellaneous

The National Monuments Service's description

'Monitoring of all ground disturbance aspects of a factory site in the Monavalley Industrial Estate, in the northern part of Tralee town, was undertaken to comply with a planning condition. An area of archaeological stratigraphy was noted during topsoil-stripping and was subsequently excavated. Four pits were excavated. One of the pits, measuring 1.6m north-south by 0.9m and 0.98m deep, was stone-lined on the south-east side. A saddle quern and a rubbing stone had been reused to line the pit. Iron slag was recovered from the upper fill. A second large pit was found 1m to the south-west; it measured 3.1m north-south by 2.7m and 0.8m deep. Two small pits were found to the south and east. They measured 0.8m north-south by 0.76m by 0.2m deep and 0.75m north-south by 0.7m by 0.15m deep. The material recovered from one of the large pits would suggest that they are prehistoric in date.' (Kiely 2000, 116-7)

Description from ‘The Prehistoric Settlement of the Lee Valley, Tralee, Co. Kerry; A Landscape Perspective’ by Michael Connolly. PhD Thesis UCC 2008.

Pit no. C29 - radiocarbon dated to Middle Bronze Age 3485±59 BP (Kiely and Dunne 2005, 45).

References

Kiely, J. and Dunne, L. 2005 Recent Archaeological Excavations in the Tralee area. In M. Connolly (ed.) Past Kingdoms: Recent Archaeological Research, Survey & Excavation in Co. Kerry, 40-64.

Kiely, J. 2000 Bunatalloon, Tralee: prehistoric pits. in I. Bennett (ed.) Excavations 1999: summary accounts of archaeological excavations in Ireland, 116-117, No. 341. Bray. Wordwell.

Connolly, M. 2008 The Prehistoric Settlement of the Lee Valley, Tralee, Co. Kerry; A Landscape Perspective by Michael Connolly. PhD Thesis, UCC.