EMAP_Progress_Reports_2009_2.pdf - The Heritage Council

Kerry
Bray Head, Valentia Island
Early Medieval Unenclosed Settlement Complex
Grid Ref: V31743121 (34174/73121)
SMR No: KE-087---
Excavation Licence: 93E0121, 94E0119, 95E0166, 97E0278 & 01E0814
Excavation Duration/year:
Site Director: A. Hayden & C. Walsh (Archaeological Projects Ltd.); G.F. Mitchell
(Trinity College Dublin)
A rich agricultural palimpsest landscape of unenclosed early medieval houses and kilns, broad
medieval furrowed fields with lynchets and a fifteenth to seventeenth-century house cluster
probably associated with narrow ridge and furrow of roughly the same date was uncovered
during a series of excavations on the southern slopes of Bray Head, the most westerly
projection of Valentia Island, just off the southern tip of the Iveragh peninsula. The
excavations were financed by grants from Trinity College Dublin (1993-95) and funding from
the Department of the Environment (1997-2001). The buildings and ridges and furrows predated
an early nineteenth century track and the banks aligned on it.
The early medieval complex comprised over 32 huts and structures, mainly in two house
clusters. The group of best preserved buildings at the west end – the ‘west settlement’ (Fig
150: 1135, 1136, 1137, 1138, 1142 and 1457) - has been briefly described by Westropp
(1912), Henry (1957) and O’Sullivan & Sheehan (1996). The remaining structures (in Roman
numerals) across Bray Head were identified during field-walking by the excavators beneath
late medieval cultivation furrows across the southern slopes, particularly at the eastern end –
the ‘east settlement’.
The early medieval excavated evidence (1993-99) comprised a group of eleven early
medieval houses (1-11) and a corn-drying kiln on steeply sloping ground at the north-eastern
end of an area of broad medieval ridge and furrows (Fig. 150: 1-11 and kiln). The sites were
situated within a large polygonal enclosure measuring 100m by 100m. Houses 1-9 were built
in five clear phases with a noticeable shift from round/oval to rectangular buildings at the
settlement. The excavation identified a progression through time from the use of vertically
set masonry to the use of horizontally laid masonry at the base of the houses’ walls. Though
no stratigraphic links could be established between the structures at the northern and
southern ends, the buildings are described below in rough chronological order.
House 1 was located at the south-eastern side of the excavated area and appears to have
been the earliest building of the group. It was oval in shape and measured at least 6.7m by
5m. Its walls measured between 0.9m and 1.1m in thickness, and were originally constructed
by two lines of vertically-set stones set in trenches which retained a mass of sod and stone.
The doorway was at the eastern end of the building. There was no trace of a laid flooring or
internal hearth. A small piece of burnt animal bone and charcoal were recovered from the top
surface of a thin layer of grey silty friable clay which overlay most of the interior. The finds
occurred at the base of a layer of brown stony loam which overlay the robbed out walls of
the building.
House 3 appears to have been roughly circular in plan measuring 7m-7.5m in diameter. It
contained neatly built dry-stone walls, between 1m and 1.2m wide, set into a trench. The
basal stone of a rotary quern was recovered on top of the wall and it is unclear if it was
placed there after the destruction of the building or originally incorporated into the wall. A
stony layer of carbonized material (probably the final habitation of the structure) was
uncovered in the interior beneath the stone collapse. An area of low terracing was uncovered
to the south of Houses 2 and 3.
House 2 was uncovered beneath Houses 6 and 7, and was truncated at its southern end by
House 4. The remains indicate a circular structure (3.4m-3.6m in diameter internally)
composed of walls of large un-mortared stone (0.9m-0.95m thick). An annulus (0.8m-0.9m in
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