EMAP_Progress_Reports_2009_2.pdf - The Heritage Council

Waterford
Kilgreany, Co. Waterford
Cave
Grid Ref: X17629438 (21762/09438)
SMR No: WA030-018
Excavation Licence: N/A
Excavation Duration/Year: 1928; September - 0ctober 1934
Site Director: E.K. Tratman (University of Bristol & Royal Irish Academy) & Hallam L.
Movius (Third Harvard Archaeological Expedition)
A cave at Kilgreany produced considerable evidence for early medieval habitation and
prehistoric burial and funerary activity. The cave was situated base of a limestone escarpment
that forms the underlying geology of a low-lying relatively flat valley captured between the
Knockmealdown Mountains to the northwest, the Monavullagh Mountains to northeast and
the Drum hills to the south. The valley is drained by the rivers Brickey, Colligan and Finisk.
The cave is made up of three chambers (‘outer’; ‘inner’; and ‘rear’), with a total length of
16.5m (Fig. 282).
The cave was first excavated in 1928 by members of the Royal Irish Academy and the
University of Bristol Speleological Society, whose objective were to obtain faunal remains. The
excavations were concentrated in the outer chamber and produced a range of artefacts,
faunal remains and human burials, presumed to be the first proof of Palaeolithic man in
Ireland. The Harvard excavations in 1934 entirely investigated the inner and outer chambers.
The trenches revealed that late Pleistocene, prehistoric and early medieval evidence were
mixed together within the extensively disturbed stratigraphy within the cave. It also
suggested that the burials were Neolithic; a theory confirmed by radiocarbon dates procured
from human, animal, and faunal remains in recent years (Molleson 1985–6, 2; Brindley &
Lainting 1989–90, 2).
A late-glacial horizon represented by an assemblage of wild boar, reindeer, giant deer (Irish
Elk), bear, lynx, stoat and arctic lemming- were recovered from inside the cave. Radiocarbon
dates from reindeer, Giant Deer (Irish Elk) and Arctic Lemming produced dates of
10,990±120 BP, 10,960±110 BP and 10,360±120 BP respectively indicating activity roughly
between 11000-10,000 B.C. Samples of Stoat, Lynx and wild Pig produced dates of 9980±90
BP, 8875±70 BP and 8340±110 BP indicating Mesolithic activity at the site.
The earliest human activity dates to the Neolithic when the cave was used for the deposition
of the dead. The remains of at least fifteen individuals and two cremations were placed inside
the cave. At least eight adults and an infant belonged to the Neolithic with the remainder also
possibly of the same period. Three concentrations of undecorated early Neolithic pottery
sherds were recorded on a deposit of brown earth and stones in the inner chamber and
comprised the earliest activity on the site. The burials were identified upon charcoal-rich
deposits mainly in the outer chamber and were possibly associated with a range of gravegoods-
stone axe fragment, shells beads, perforated and worked animal teeth and a hollow
scraper. Two inhumation burials (Kilgreany A and B) produced early-mid Neolithic dates
(4660±75 BP, 4820±60 BP). A domesticated cattle bone from the outer chamber returned a
late Mesolithic/early Neolithic date (5190±80 BP).
The cave appears to have become a focus for votive deposition during the Dowris phase of
the Late Bronze Age. A possible late Bronze Age hoard comprising a bronze bifid razor, a
bronze socketed knife, two bronze bulb-headed pins, two amber beads, a perforated boar’s
tusk, an imperforated boar’s tusk and possibly coarse undecorated Late Bronze Age pottery
were recovered from the cave. It was suggested that some of the un-burnt and/or cremated
human remains may date to the Bronze Age though further radiocarbon dates can only
confirm this. Several lithics, perforated dog or wolf canine, quartz crystals and a stalactite
bead were recovered out of context and indicate further Neolithic and Bronze Age activity in
the cave.
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