Background to recent archaeological discoveries

Over 40 archaeologists from all over the world were engaged in excavation work along the N6 Ballinasloe to Athlone road for almost a year long period. Investigations commenced along the motorway route, which stretches from the townland of Tulrush, immediately south-east of Ballinasloe, to the townland of Monksland, west of Athlone from September 2006 to August 2007, with a phase of test excavations throughout the whole footprint of the scheme. Excavations were undertaken in every field of the new road project, and these in turn, uncovered ten new archaeological sites that were previously unrecorded. The new sites were found in the main, by stripping sample areas of topsoil with mechanical diggers, working under archaeological supervision. Once the discovery of a new site was confirmed, however, the rest of the work was undertaken by hand. This is particularly labour-intensive and painstaking work, typically requiring thousands of hours of hand-digging, measured drawings, photography and finds or samples retrieval. Among the main findings were pre-historic burnt mounds or outdoor cooking sites in Ardagawna, Culliaghmore, Taduff East and Kilbegly townlands and a limekiln dating back to the 19th century in Belrea. However, by far the most interesting find was that of an early medieval horizontal mill in Kilbegly, considered one of the best preserved examples in Europe. Work on this site allowed the archaeologists to piece together specific details of milling or engineering technology dating back over 1,200 years. The archaeological work was carried out by Valerie J Keeley Ltd, a private archaeological company based in Kilkenny appointed by Galway County Council, with funding from the National Roads Authority. About 40 archaeologists were employed on the project. Most of them were graduates of Irish universities where archaeology is taught, but others came from abroad, including places as far flung as Hungary, Spain and the USA. Current heritage policy and legislation provides for archaeological investigations on big development sites at an early stage of the project and as part of a planned programme of work. This has been the case in particular since the late 1980s, when Ireland adopted the EU policy of making the developer pay for this sort of work, instead of the State, and the result has been a big increase in pre-development investigations all over Ireland in the last 20 years. The NRA is one of the biggest sponsors of pre-development archaeological investigations in the Republic of Ireland and employs a team of Project Archaeologists to manage the work. An article on the site by the excavation director, Neil Jackman, will appear in the forthcoming NRA publication on Dining and Dwelling. Proceedings of Heritage Week seminar 2008, which will be launched at this week's Heritage Week event in Dublin August 27 next. Meanwhile, a book on the site, The Mill at Kilbegly, will also be published by the NRA as part of its archaeological monograph series.