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This book documents the archaeological investigations carried out by Transport Infrastructure Ireland in advance of the construction of the new N5 in County Mayo. While not a full site report, it provides an easily digestible and succinct summarisation of the project and its main findings for a general audience.
The project extended over 25.5km (16 miles) and ranged widely in the types of landscape it covered, from hills to bogs and from scrubland to open fields. While care had been taken in the development of the project to avoid known archaeological monuments, as is always the case, the work still revealed 58 new sites. The book begins with a helpful in-depth review of what was known about the archaeology and history of this area of western Mayo before the project took place, and then goes on to lay out the main findings from the desk-based assessment and preliminary surveying, as well as the new sites that have been discovered.
The next four chapters then go in chronological order, highlighting the most important discoveries from the excavations. Chapter 2 discusses the 54 burnt mounds (fulachtaí fia), mostly dating to the early Bronze Age, uncovered during the project – the most prolific site type found during the excavations, which adds to 553 already recorded in Co. Mayo. The next chapter focuses on two specific areas of interest: Drumaleheen, a cluster of sites on a drumlin that was occupied from the middle Bronze Age to the Iron Age, and Drumneen, 11km (7 miles) to the south-west, which revealed settlement evidence from the Neolithic through to the late Bronze Age, also located on a drumlin. This chapter provides an interesting compare-and- contrast between these two similarly sited locations. Chapter 4 then moves into the medieval period, documenting the evidence for agriculture and industry – particularly iron smelting and smithing – across the entire project, while the final main chapter takes us to the early modern period, looking primarily at three sites: a farmhouse and associated outbuildings, a lime kiln, and a water-powered grain mill.
While this is an engagingly written report, it would have benefited from a discussion at the end, tying in all these aspects of archaeology. As it stands, it seems to end rather abruptly with the early modern finds. Overall, however, it serves as a great resource about the archaeology of western Co. Mayo.
REVIEW KK
Ancient Places: archaeology and history on the N5 Westport to Turlough road project, Co. Mayo
Kerri Cleary, Richard F Gillespie, and Paul Clarke
Transport Infrastructure Ireland, free eBook
ISBN 978-1911633471
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