Enclosure

The National Monuments Service's description

The ring-ditch (ME025-083----) was cut by the ditch (Wth 2.1-3.4m; D 0.86-1.8m) of a rectangular enclosure (dims 22m plus NE-SW; 11m plus NW-SE) which survives partially outside the excavated area to the NW, although it is not thought to extend much further in this direction. The ditch has a marked step (Wth c. 0.9m; D c. 0.4m) on its outer side. Twenty five fills were recorded in the ditch but only the uppermost was consistent throughout its extent. A deposit of stones (L c. 2m) on the long section of ditch is a causeway. The only artefacts recovered were two pieces of polished bone and a fragment of a bone comb. Twenty fragments of human bone were retrieved from the animal bone collection. A C14 date of 640-694 cal. AD (UBA-9932) was provided by a sample from a lower fill. A subrectangular pit (dims 2.4m x 1.75m; max. D 0.26m) in the interior cut the fosse of the ring-ditch and yielded a bone pin and a sherd of green-glazed post-medieval pottery. (Halliday 2009, 35-8)
Externally, a pit (surviving dims 1.5m x 1.5m; D 0.4m) c. 25m to the E provided a C14 date of 431-599 cal. AD (UB-9922), and this pit had been cut by features related to the major NNE-SSW field boundary (ME025-082----). A single cereal-drying kiln (dims 1.8m x 1.1m; max. D 0.4m) with an oxidized base was recorded c. 18m S of the enclosure. It had three visible ash lenses but the base provided a C14 date of 571-681 cal. AD (UBA-9923). Some isolated pits also probably belong to this phase (Halliday 2009, 37-8, 42).

See the attached images from Halliday (2009, fig 25, 12) _02 Excavated features; _03 Rectangular enclosure

Compiled by: Michael Moore

Date of upload: 5 April, 2023

Halliday, S. 2009 Navan Inner Relief Road Scheme, Sites 2 & 3. Licence: 06E0024. Final Excavation Report, Unpublished, Arch Tech