Archaeological treasure trove goes on display

A TREASURE trove of archaeological discoveries, some dating back 10,000 years, has gone on display in Cork.

They include a bronze age sauna, along with the earliest-known carved face on Irish pottery and coins minted by James II.

The exhibition, entitled New Roads; New Discoveries, is being staged at Cork Public Museum at Fitzgerald Park.

It features finds made between 2001 and last year, following 178 excavations by archaeologists on six National Roads Authority (NRA) road projects in the county.

The exhibition, which is free and open to the public until December 19, will show evidence of the earliest houses ever excavated in the county at Barnagore, Ballincollig and Gortore, Fermoy.

A further three neolithic houses were discovered along the route of the Fermoy-Mitchelstown road, which is currently under construction.

Prior to these excavations, only one other neolithic house had been discovered in the county.

A piece of tool-cut antler, also discovered in the Fermoy area and dating back to 8,000 BC, will also be on display.

One of the most extraordinary discoveries made in the past few years occurred near Mitchelstown, when archaeologists unearthed a small pottery bowl with a stylised human face. It is the earliest known three-dimensional representation of a human face carved in Ireland.

NRA archaeologists discovered a number of bronze age settlements at Ballybrowney Lower, Rathcormac; Ballyvergan West, Youghal; Killydonoghue, Glanmire; and Mitchelstown.

It was revealed that the contents of a bronze-age urn, found in the path of the new Mitchelstown-Fermoy road, had been analysed and was shown to contain the cremated remains of a woman and a foetus. Part of the urn is on display.

The settlements were built around 1,500 BC.

One of the most surprising discoveries came at Scartbarry, Watergrasshill, where a spectacular bronze age sauna was unearthed.

Discoveries of iron age settlements were also made.

The remains of an iron age house were discovered at Ballinaspig More, Ballincollig, while a temporary shelter, from the same period, was found at Muckridge, near Youghal. Iron production sites were also found in both areas.

A moated village, dating from the medieval period, was found at Ballinvinney, Glanmire, and another settlement from the same era was located at Mondaniel, Rathcormac.

An equally rare settlement, dating from the 17th century, was excavated at Ballinvinny.

The site revealed a hoard of James II coins which were made from melted gun metal.

“The exhibition will be very important for the people of Cork to see. It has doubled, if not trebled the information we have about prehistoric Cork,” the museum’s assistant curator Dan Breen said.

The NRA is preparing a book which will detail the results of all its archaeological excavations in Co Cork since 2001.

It is hoped the book will be published in 2010.