EMAP_Progress_Reports_2009_2.pdf - The Heritage Council

Kerry
‘Dunbeg Fort’ (Fahan td.), Co. Kerry
Early Medieval Promontory Fort
Grid Ref: V35219726 (035219/097269)
SMR No: KE052-270001
Excavation Licence: E000161
Excavation Duration/Year: June - September 1977
Site Director: T. Barry (National Monuments Division, Office of Public Works)
Dunbeg promontory fort, situated in Fahan townland on a sheer cliff promontory, was
excavated in 1977 because of coastal erosion. Excavations revealed that the site’s defensive
ditches and banks and it’s internal stone building were mostly likely occupied between the
eighth and eleventh centuries with some earlier evidence for activity in the late Bronze Age.
The fort itself consists of a clochán defended by an inner stone rampart and an outer line of
five ditches and four banks (Fig. 161). A souterrain leads from the rampart entrance under
part of the causeway through the earthen defences. The fort’s interior was almost completely
excavated and trenches were cut across the earthen defences, rampart, causewayed
entrance and souterrain.
The earliest phase of activity on the site consisted of a shallow U-shaped ditch (0.9m deep
and 2.2m maximum width) which partly underlay the inner stone rampart (Fig. 162). The
ditch ran for 19m from inside the line (southern side) of the rampart entrance to its
termination point at the eastern curved end of the rampart. Associated with the ditch were a
possible dry-stone wall and wattle fence, indicated by a collapse of stone and a layer of
charcoal along the length of the ditch. One copper nail was recovered from the topmost layer
of the ditch, and a sample from the charcoal layer of the ditch produced a Late Bronze
Age/early Iron Age date.
The four lines of banks survived to a maximum height of 1m above the old ground level and
were up to 3m wide. Tentative traces of palisade trenches (maximum of 0.5m deep and 1m
wide) were identified on the north-facing (external) crest of Banks 1 and 2. Several of the
sections through the banks revealed that they had been constructed in two or three distinct
phases which took place fairly close together as indicated by the lack of any intervening old
sod horizons between them.
The angle of most of the tip-lines of the banks appears to suggest that each bank was
constructed with the up-cast from the (internal) ditch to its immediate south. A series of
boulders in Ditch 2 at the base of Bank 1 appear to have slipped off an outer (northern)
stone-facing of this bank. Indications of a possible outer stone facing was also identified on
Bank 2.
The four ditches north of Ditch 1 all had a similar shallow U-shaped profile measuring from
between 0.98m and 1.55m deep and from 5.60m to 12.0m wide. Most of the fill of these
ditches was the result of the normal denudation of the defensive banks, with evidence also
for narrow layers of windblown sand/silt. Ditch 1 was deeper and more steeply sloping than
the other defensive ditches. The original fill of the ditch appears to have been cleared out in
recent times and backfilled with an extensive deposit of stone- up to 1.6m deep- which were
probably deliberately thrown off the stone rampart or off the entrance-complex of Bank 1.
Charcoal from the base of Ditch 1 indicated that it was in use in the eighth/ninth centuries
A.D.
The inner stone rampart had a maximum thickness of 6.35m and width of 3.08m and
survived for 29m, about half of its recorded length in the mid-nineteenth century. The
rampart was depicted by George Du Noyer in 1856 as completely cutting off the promontory
in one straight line. Two cuttings were opened across the space between the surviving
curving eastern end of the rampart and the cliff edge but no trace of an original stone
rampart was located. Various accounts report the removal of stone from the site in the
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