Neolithic and Bronze Age Landscapes of North Mayo: Report 2011

cutting the bank face will have receded by eight to ten metres and turf cutters will again remove the
scraw and have a second cutting and in very deep bog may even have a third cutting. Turf cutting
normally takes place in April and May. After about three weeks in the corraí, in which time a skin
dries on the exposed sods, the turf is spread by throwing the first corraí further outwards so that all
sods are lying flat on the ground in a strip between three and six metres from the bank edge. The
second top is then spread flat on the ground in the three metre strip from the bank edge which had
been covered by the first and second corraí. The third and fourth tops are spread in the boghole in
a similar manner. In reasonably fair weather the turf is sufficiently dry to be ‘reckled’ three weeks
after spreading. Reckling involves standing four sods in a pyramid and if the turf is well dried adding
perhaps another six to eight sods around the pyramid with intact or broken sods on top. The open
centre of the reckle and the fact that the sod is now in minimal contact with the potentially wet
ground allows the turf to dry completely when it is then referred to as ‘saved’.
The Erris Survey
A major change of direction in the research was initiated in 1979. There were no funds available for
excavation that year but a chance meeting with Lelia Doolan who was co-ordinator of a
development group in Erris at the time led to the offer of a small grant to investigate some aspect of
the archaeology of the Erris area. A short four week programme of reconnoitring areas of cutaway
bog and turbary (where bogs were still being cut) located pre-bog walls at numerous locations to the
west of Belderrig, including a number at the northern end of the Mullet peninsula. In preparing a
brief report on the programme for the Doolan committee and the general public the team were
acutely aware of how weak the visual record was. Over the years they knew that even professional
archaeologists had at times doubted the existence of the walls from the remains to be seen above
ground. The difficulty arose because people thought that where the bog has been cut away, that the
prehistoric surface remains exposed but as explained above this is not the case. Because the upper
ten to fifteen centimetres of growing bog is removed and thrown down onto the surface exposed in
the previous year’s cutting, the ground surface and plants visible in the cutaway bog is the modern
surface and plants of the uncut bog. The only place where the pre-bog surface is exposed is the less
than one metre wide strip immediately adjacent to the bank face where the last season’s turf has
been cut. If the bog depth exceeded four tops deep even this strip will merely show the residual
uncut turf. The redeposited top sod or “scraw” can easily cover up the exposed walls so that only
the top stones are exposed. This is particularly the case where the bog has not been cut to its full
depth.
In order to show the profile of the walls in the cutaway bogs, a dozen bamboo rods, three feet in
length were inserted into the bog as a transect across the line of the wall at 30 cm intervals. The
bamboos were all pushed into the soft bog until they hit the hard ‘gravel’, that is the mineral soil
beneath. The resultant profile of the tops of the bamboos is a precise profile of the mineral soil and
the prehistoric wall unaffected by the overlying scraw and/or any residual uncut bog. The wall
profiles could now be captured in photographs and by giving such unequivocal visual verification it
was found that the bamboos allowed the walls to be followed even where there was no visual
evidence. During this short season in 1979 it was found that the walls could be followed in under
the uncut bog by using bamboos of six feet in length though the insertion and in particular the
extraction of the bamboos proved to be very arduous.
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