Barrow - ditch barrow

The National Monuments Service's description

In reclaimed pasture, 180m N of the Morningstar River that marks the townland boundary with Glenlary. Barrow (LI049-231----) lies 35m to E and barrow (LI049-232----) 80m to SE. Not depicted on historic OSi maps. Possible barrow listed as ‘Mitchelstowndown West 54’ by Grogan (1989, 241). Excavated by Aoife Daly and Eoin Grogan of Discovery Programme in 1992 the results of which were summarised as follows; ‘The cemetery of Mitchelstowndown West near Knocklong contains 53 small barrows. Excavation of 4 of these [LI049-230/233----] took place over an 8-week period in July and August, 1992. The site is defined by a U-sectioned ditch. At the south-east the ditch extends outwards to define a crescentic area or shelf. On the exterior edge of the main ditch deep tool marks, the result of using a mattock or similar implement, were found. The inner edge of the ditch is a neat, almost vertical face. Tiny bone fragments were found in the ditch silt but are too fragmentary to be identified (Barra Ó Donnabháin, pers. comm.). The mound was built of material from the ditch. It survived to a maximum height of 0.1 8m. A second curvilinear ditch was located within the central area of the barrow. This is semi-circular in plan. It cut through the mound of Barrow 54 and thus post-dates it. In modern times the mound was flattened and the ditch had been deliberately filled. Finds include a fragment of chert debitage, a humanly modified chert pebble, a slightly burnt flint flake, a chert scraper and a fragment of a whetstone. The disturbance dates to the recent past as it contained modern delph and iron fragments.
Discussion
The Mitchelstowndown West sites form a clear element of the barrow complex and the associated funerary tradition in the Morningstar Valley and probably date to the Middle to Late Bronze Age. Because there is no conclusive evidence that the barrows had a funerary function it is postulated that burial deposits had become so token that the barrows’ function had become a symbolic monument associated with burial rituals and perhaps with remembrance of the dead’ (Daly and Grogan 1993, 43-4). No surface remains visible on Google Earth orthoimages.

See attached Google Earth orthoimages.

Compiled by: Martin Fitzpatrick

Date of upload: 11 October 2021

References

Grogan, E. 1989 The Early Prehistory of the Lough Gur Region: Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement patterns in North Munster, south of the River Shannon, 3 Vols. Doctoral PhD Thesis submitted to the Dept. of Archaeology, University College Dublin.

Daly, A. and Grogan, G. 1993 Mitchelstowndown West: Ring-ditches/ring-barrows. In I. Bennett (ed.) Excavations 1992: Summary Accounts of Archaeological Excavations in Ireland, No. 131, 43-4. Wordwell, Dublin.