Barrow - ditch barrow

The National Monuments Service's description

In reclaimed pasture, immediately N of the Morningstar River that marks the townland boundary with Glenlary. Barrow (LI049-008----) lies 100m to E. Not depicted on historic OSi maps. Possible barrow listed as ‘Mitchelstowndown West 58’ by Grogan (1989, 241). Recorded as Site No. 62 when 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. Barrow 62 has a gently curved ditch profile. In the ditch a sterile silty deposit accumulated. It contained some tiny fragments of bone but this is too fragmentary to be identified as to species (Barra Ó Donnabháin, pets. comm.). The upper fill consisted of more solid material, probably derived from the mound of which there was no surviving evidence,
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, 44). No surface remains visible on Google Earth orthoimages.

See attached Google Earth orthoimage.

Compiled by: Martin Fitzpatrick

Date of upload: 11 October 2021

References

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.

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.