Neolithic and Bronze Age Landscapes of North Mayo: Report 2011

The second season of excavation of the Glenulra enclosure entailed the removal of the uncut bank of
turf over much of this part of the site. During the 1970 season some small densely concentrated
pockets of tiny quartz chips had been noted in the soil immediately under the peat. In 1971 after
some dry and very sunny days one of these concentrations was seen to have dried out and was
recognisable as a sherd of very degraded pottery. Once identified some further sherds of Neolithic
pottery and degraded pottery were recovered.
The most important result of the season’s fieldwork did not come from the excavation but in the
weeks immediately following. Turf cutting for fuel over a number of generations had removed the
overlying bog from almost one square kilometre of Céide hill, the equivalent of many millions of
pounds worth of archaeological excavation. On completion of the season’s excavation the writer
and one of the undergraduate assistants on the excavation, now Dr. Brian Dornan, mapped the field
boundaries exposed in the cutaway bogs in Behy and Glenulra townlands which resulted in the
drawing up of the original map of the Behy/Glenulra field system(Caulfield 1978).
The initial survey led to two conclusions which remain valid today. Firstly the Behy/Glenulra field
system was laid out as a series of long parallels divided by cross walls into large fields and appear to
be contemporary with the enclosure . This conclusion is based on the fact that neither the enclosure
nor the wall nearby has been robbed out, something one would expect if they were not
contemporary. Secondly, the walls seem to have been built to create enclosed pasture for cattle.
Both the size of the individual fields and the overall size of the field system indicated pasture though
this did not rule out the possibility of small tillage plots within the larger fields.
The Belderrig Valley Research: Belderg Beg Excavations.
Dire economic circumstances in autumn 1971 led to a government initiative to expend €30 million
on labour as rapidly as possible with archaeological excavations seen as an ideal medium for this as
it had been since 1933. The problem for academic archaeologists was that the work had to start
promptly and to be completed by end of March which ruled out student participation or full time
involvement by lecturing staff. Herity’s discovery of the cultivation ridges at Carrownaglogh had
shown that early farming practices within the field boundaries could be recovered. The windswept
bleak hillside at Behy/Glenulra and the size of the fields made Céide hill an unlikely candidate for the
discovery of prehistoric cultivation practices. It was decided to turn attention to the stone walls on
the western side of Belderrig valley in Belderg Beg townland, a much more sheltered location. A
project was proposed to employ twelve local workmen for ten weeks under the day to day
supervision of Patrick Caulfield to uncover the stone walls about which he had written to the
National Museum in 1934. The writer travelled from University College Dublin at the weekends and
by re-scheduling lectures with colleagues was able to extend the visits to be there for Friday and or
Monday working day. The local workforce was fully briefed about what had been discovered at the
Glenulra enclosure but it was not expected to recover artifacts and certainly not pottery at this
phase of the work. Yet within two weeks one of the workmen, Micheál O Malley had identified and
recovered early Neolithic pottery which remains as the most intact vessel found during the years of
excavation.
The Glenulra excavation was completed at Easter 1972 and the first full season of excavation at
Belderg Beg commenced that summer. Half the “stone circle” was excavated and it quickly emerged
that the circle of stones was part of an outer bank of earth and stone of a large circular house with
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