Barrow - ditch barrow

The National Monuments Service's description

On a ridge, c. 1.8km SW of the confluence of the River Nore and the Kings River and c. 800m E of the village of Stonyford. Indicated as an irregular curvilinear enclosure on the 1st (1839) ed. OS 6-inch map, with a field boundary running along the N-NNW perimeter of the enclosure. On the 1948 it is shown as a circular enclosure (diam. c. 25m), with the field boundary to the N-NNW kinking around it and another field boundary running S and E-W immediately outside the S and W quadrants of the enclosure. A D-shaped enclosure (KK027-096----) is located 15m to the E, another enclosure (KK027-098----) c. 250m to the ENE and a barrow (KK027-036----) c. 340m to the SE.

The monument, which was levelled in the 1990s, was described locally as consisting of, ‘a large circular mound with a deep encircling ditch’ (Rassmann et al. 2019, 353). This description, with the lack of evidence for an outer bank, would suggest a ditch barrow classification.

In 1852 a glass urn containing a cremation was reported to the Royal Irish Academy by a Mr. Perry, who stated that it had been, ‘found in a rath and protected by stones in a field of his near Stonyford, Co. Kilkenny’ (Bourke 1989, 56). A bronze disc mirror had been used as a lid for the urn and it was accompanied by a glass phial, also known as a lachrymatory or unguentarium (ibid. 56-7). They appear to have been within a stone-lined pit or cist. According to Bourke (1994, 164), the burial is, ‘typical of the Roman middle-class burial rite of the first and second centuries AD’, though the, ‘most likely date for the Stonyford burial is late first century’.

Independent research by Cóilín Ó Drisceoil (2013, 12) and Aideen Ireland (2014-15, 41) led both of them to conclude that this burial (see KK027-095----) is most likely to have come from the barrow at Ballycoam, where it would have been a secondary insertion (Ó Drisceoil 2013, 17). The adjacent D-shaped enclosure has parallels with ‘banjo’ enclosures which have been identified through archaeological excavation in southern England and west Wales (Rassmann et al. 2019, 358). These have produced evidence of occupation, often in the form of internal roundhouses and storage pits, and have been dated to the Middle and Late Iron Age, c. 400 B.C. to A.D. 43 (ibid.). It was also noted that in Britain banjo enclosures are sometimes found in association with Iron Age barrow cemeteries (ibid.).

Compiled by: Jean Farrelly

References

Bourke, E. 1994 Glass Vessels of the First Nine Centuries AD in Ireland. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, vol. 124, 163-209.

Bourke, E. 1989 Stoneyford: a first-century Roman burial from Ireland. Archaeology Ireland 3, no. 2, 56-7.

Ireland, A. M. 2014-15 The Stonyford burial: fact or fiction (part II). Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 144-5, 27-44.

Ó Drisceoil, C. 2013 Kilkenny and the Roman world. Old Kilkenny Review 65, 7-19.

Rassmann, K., Roman S., Hans-Ulrich, V., Ó Drisceoil, C. and Cahill Wilson, J. 2019  Following in the footsteps of Gerhard Bersu at Freestone Hill and Stonyford, Co. Kilkenny. New contributions from magnetic surveys. In Grunwald, S., Banffy, E., Gramsch, A., Hofmann, K.P. and Rasbach, G. (eds), Digging Bersu. Ein europaischer Archaologe. Breicht der Romisch-Germanischen Komission, Band 100, 335-366.