EMAP_Progress_Reports_2009_2.pdf - The Heritage Council

Kerry
Reask, Co. Kerry
Early Medieval Ecclesiastical Settlement
Grid Ref: Q36740437 (036749/104370)
SMR No: KE042-060001
Excavation Licence: N/A
Excavation Duration/year: Summers 1972-75
Site Director: T. Fanning (National Parks and Monuments Branch, Office of Public
Works)
An excavation at the site of a recorded ceallúnach at Reask revealed considerable evidence
for a sequence of early medieval monastic buildings, burial, habitation and industry. The site
was truncated by a roadway and excavations were undertaken to divert the roadway around
the enclosure and conserve the internal monuments. Excavations involved the complete
investigation of the enclosure interior as well as areas immediately outside to the east and
north.
The site was located on roughly the highest point of a rather low-lying area of land with good
view of Smerwick harbour to the north and Mount Brandon to the northeast. The site consists
of an enclosing cashel, internal dividing wall, stone oratory, slab-shrine, seven stone
buildings, decorated early cross-slabs, early medieval graveyard and ceallúnach (Fig. 168).
Fanning advanced a general sequence for the various excavated structures and features
across the site though stressed that the relationships between structures within the
settlement area and between them and the cemetery area could not always be established
with complete certainty.
Phase 1 was associated with the habitation remains in the central area and the construction
of Structure G and possibly Structure F. The settlement was enclosed by the cashel wall
which also defined a primary lintel grave cemetery demarcated by inscribed pillar-stones and
partly grouped close to a small slab-shrine and perhaps a wooden oratory. It was suggested
that this phase of activity belonged to a Christian community of between the fifth and
seventh century.
The primary enclosure wall was roughly sub-circular in shape (45m by 43m). Only the
foundations of the wall survived, though excavations in the best preserved sections in the
northeast indicate that it had substantial cashel-type walls over 2.0m thick and closer to 3.0m
in some instances. A number of stones laid at right angles to the line of the enclosure wall
were uncovered at two points along the west side and could possibly have belonged to a
system of small fields or gardens attached to the enclosure. A base sherd of medieval pottery
was found overlying the collapse directly south of the oratory but underlying the late
ceallúnach graves. Other finds from amongst the enclosure collapse included a base sherd of
early wheel-made pottery and an iron ring, possibly part of a ring-pin.
The primary cemetery contained forty-two east-west aligned graves, the vast majority
constructed with their sides and ends lined with small slabs and covered by lintels. The lintel
grave cemetery respected the curve of the enclosure wall and was set in rows in the eastern
side of the site extending from the pillar stone as far as Structure F. No skeletal remains were
recovered from any of the graves. A sherd of Late Roman Amphora (B ware - late-fifth/midsixth
century A.D) and a portion of a blue glass bead were found in disturbed soil from the
general level of the lintel graves.
The burials which pre-date or were contemporary with the stone oratory had roughly the
same alignment and were therefore difficult to distinguish between. A number of the lintel
graves underlay and clearly pre-dated the Phase 2 stone oratory and its stone paved
entrance. At the same lower levels, were the lintel graves to the north of the stone oratory
and beside the cross-inscribed pillar stone. A slab-shrine appears to have provided a focus for
the early lintel cemetery. Its remains were excavated 2m in front of the oratory and consisted
of a small paved area, enclosed on the south and east by two erect slabs with two pillar
318