Quarry

The National Monuments Service's description

Quarry face located just 75m S of the summit of Knockeyon Hill (OD 710 ft / 215m) on S facing slope overlooking Lough Derravaragh from SSE-S-W-NW. The shoreline of Lough Derravaragh is 250m to the SW. Church (WM012-026----) dedicated to St. Eyon located 130m to SW. Exposed limestone and chert cliff face (L 75m NE-SW) running roughly NE-SW depicted on the 1911 ed. OS 25-inch map. This exposed semi-circular shaped cliff-faces (L 10m; D 0.3m) appear to be the site of a chert quarry possibly dating from the Mesolithic period (O'Sullivan et. al. 2007, 36-7; Little 2009, 130). The exposed rock face has been described as quarried feature which 'chase bands of festooned chert through the surrounding limestone and in some places disappear under the modern sloping ground surface. Immediately below these cut or quarried features there is a wide and extensive scree slope of chert stretching down into the oak and hazel woods of the hill' (ibid., 37). This 'festoon' chert is different from the usual black glassy or very fine-grained chert and can be identified from its characteristic feature of thin dark lines in loops and rings through the dark brown chert. In 2006 a site visit by Aimee Little and Dr. Matthew Parkes of the Natural History Museum of Ireland discovered several pieces of chert amongst the scree at the base of the outcrop which showed signs of secondary working suggesting that they were late Mesolithic in date; pick like forms were also identified amongst the scree (ibid.). Dr Parkes identified several areas on the face of the chert outcrop which appear to have been quarried, as there was no natural explanation for the type of bed recession visible (ibid., 37-8). It has been suggested that the festooned chert Mesolithic tools excavated at Clonava Island (WM006-065----) located 8.6km to the NW may have been quarried from Knockeyon Hill (ibid., 38-9; Little 2014, 2). The late Mesolithic wetland site at Corralanna (WM002-035----) is 12.5km to the NNW.

Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien

Date of upload: 16 February 2017

References

Little, A. 2009 The island the hill. Extracting scales of sociability from a Mesolithic chert quarry. In N. Finlay, S. McCartan, N. Milner and C. Wickham Jones (eds) From bann flakes to bushmills; papers in honour of Professor Peter Woodman, 129-38. Oxford. Oxford Books.

Little, A 2014 Clonava Island revisited: a story of cooking, plants and re-occupation during the Irish Late Mesolithic. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 114, 1-21.

O'Sullivan, A., Little, A. and Parkes, M. 2007 The power of stone. Archaeology Ireland 21 (3), 36-9.