EMAP_Progress_Reports_2009_2.pdf - The Heritage Council

Kerry
Illaunloughan, Co. Kerry
Early Medieval Ecclesiastical Settlement
Grid Ref: V362733 (03620/07330)
SMR No: KE087-036
Excavation Licence: 92E0087
Excavation Duration/year: 1992-1995
Site Director: C. Walsh & J.W. Marshall (University of California, Berkeley)
Illaunloughan is a small island (0.1 hectares at high tide) in the Portmagee Channel between
Valentia Island and the Kerry mainland. The site was occupied by a monastic community
between the mid-/late-seventh century and mid-ninth century, and approximately 70% of the
island was excavated as part of a research program from 1992-95. Four phases of occupation
were evident.
Phase 1 dated to the mid-seventh/mid-eighth centuries and comprised three sod-walled
domestic huts, an oratory, a diminutive structure, a shrine and burials (Fig. 164). Two
contemporary conjoined sod-walled huts (A and B) were exposed in the western section of
the island. Hut A was 3.7m in internal diameter and contained a central stone-lined hearth.
The narrow sod walls were contained within two concentric trenches, revetted by orthostats
and dry-stone masonry.
Hut B had the same approximate internal diameter of Hut A though its external diameter
(6.7m) was considerably greater because of its thicker walls. It sod walls were contained
within two shallow trenches cut into bedrock. Postholes around the inner trench indicate that
the inner sod fill was revetted by post-and-wattle instead of stone. Charcoal from the central
stone-lined hearth produced seventh/eighth century date (see below).
Hut C was revealed on the southern edge of the island beneath a midden belonging to a
nearby hut (D) from Phase 2. It was heavily eroded and consisted only of a semi-circular
trench with a single posthole at the eastern end, presumably part of an entrance. An external
layer of rubble stone aligned with the arc of the trench may have been used to retain blocks
of sod.
A regularly flagged path extended for a distance of 2.5m from the entrance of Hut B. The two
huts (A and B) were built up against the inner face of a section of the island’s western
enclosing stone wall (0.5m high) which buffered the community from the western winds and
sea. A deep organic artificial garden soil covered much of the western ‘domestic’ half of the
island and suggests the growing of vegetables during the first phase of the monastic
settlement.
Hut C was interpreted as the earliest structure on the site and being in the most exposed
location appears to have been used primarily for industrial purposed contemporary with Huts
A and B. A localized area of metalworking debris covering Hut C revealed evidence for the
designing and casting of copper-/bronze-alloy brooches and pins. Over 80 fragments of clay
moulds (two-piece moulds, crucibles and part of a tuyère), as well as carved bone motif,
were recovered from the debris. Four copper/bronze alloy artefacts (a penannular ring
brooch, an annular brooch-pin, ring-brooch fragment, and a belt end/buckle plate) were
recovered in a nearby midden close to Hut D.
A sod-walled oratory, succeeded by a small oratory/shrine structure was excavated partly
beneath and to the east of the Phase 2 dry-stone oratory. A number of closely-spaced graves
were placed behind the eastern wall of the primary sod oratory and appear to have been
associated with this structure.
Two stone cists containing the remains of two adults and one infant were sealed beneath the
gable shaped shrine on the northern side of the island and were dated to the lateseventh/late-
eighth centuries (see below). Scallop shells and quartz pebbles were found
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