Concentric enclosure

The National Monuments Service's description

Located on a bluff overlooking a NW-SE section of the River Boyne, which is c. 100m to the SW. This monument was first identified from a LiDAR Survey of the Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site (Davis et al. 2013), and was confirmed by a magnetic gradiometry survey (12R0080) conducted during 2012. Close analysis of these results identifies three widely-spaced ditch features (ext. dims c. 123m E-W; c. 104m N-S). The innermost enclosure (diam. c. 60m) has at least one possible souterrain identified as a trench in the NW interior, while a rectangular house site is identifiable in the NE interior. Two other house-sites are in the vicinity and a line of at least three rectangular fields (dims c. 40m x c. 30m) extend NNW from the innermost ditch feature. (Ní Lionáin and Davis 2016, 134-5)
Two cores were extracted (16E0347) by Clíodhna Ní Lionáin and other from the inner (Wth of top 8-9m; min. D 1.5m) and middle (Wth of top 6-7m; min. D 2.68m) ditches of this monument (excavation.ie 2016:848) for chemical analysis. The higher phosphate values of the inner fosse suggest that it has accumulated more settlement debris.

Compiled by Michael Moore

Date of revised upload: 9 December, 2016
Amended: 3 February 2021

References

Davis, S., Brady, C., Megarry, W. and Barton, K. 2013 Lidar survey in the Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site. In R. Opitz and D. Cowley (eds) Interpreting Archaeological Topography: Lasers, 3D Data, Observation, Visualisation and Applications, 223-7. Oxford. Oxbow Books.