This lavishly produced volume reports on excavations in advance of a bypass at Edercloon, County Longford, the place name meaning ‘between the meadows’ in Irish. The excavations took place in 2006 and the first report was produced in 2009, so this publication has been a long time coming, but it is well worth waiting for.
The excavations focused on a small area, just 35m wide and 150m long, within which was an incredible concentration of 46 wooden platforms and trackways crossing a narrow stretch of bog, with the remains of six more structures from another small area nearby at Tomisky. The wooden remains date between the Neolithic to early Medieval periods including 24 trackways, 7 platforms and 19 isolated groups of worked wood.
Two of the trackways were dated by dendrochronology while 59 radiocarbon dates provide good dating evidence for the structures and most of the finds. After a chapter providing evidence of the environmental setting, the structures are presented chronologically in a series of three chapters. Two bog bursts, in the early to middle Bronze Age and the late Bronze Age, led to drier conditions and significant peaks of trackway construction. A later chapter looks in detail at the local environment through insect and wood species analysis.
The earliest trackways were simple brushwood structures, one of which dated to 2870-2490 cal BC showed evidence for both stone and metal tools, providing the earliest evidence of the use of metal axes in Ireland. The late Bronze Age and early Iron Age structures were more numerous and more substantial, many being multi-phase structures with wooden material up to 1.44m deep. One of these, Edercloon 12/13, had four layers laid down between the mid to late Bronze Age and the early Iron Age.
In addition to the wooden structures, the site is remarkable for the assemblage of 46 wooden artefacts that were discovered and were examined for an MA by the volume author. These include 9 bowls, dishes, tubs and troughs and a lid, mainly dating to the late Bronze Age/early Iron Age. The remains of three wheels were found, the earliest from the late Bronze Age being a surviving third of a tripartite block wheel, the earliest know example from Ireland. The other two were wheel rim fragments (felloes) one of iron Age date and the other from the early medieval period.
Other finds included two yew spears, two mallets, and ‘L’ shaped handle, a sloe ‘club’, yew withies, a swingle tree and two decorative ‘walking sticks’ formed of honeysuckle grown around hazel rods. A mid to late Iron Age trackway yielded an interesting flat ash timber with six well made lap joints with evidence of dowels, possibly part of a cart or sledge.
The wooden structures and artefacts are well illustrated with plans, drawings and colour photographs and the text is clear and not verbose. The volume represents a much delayed excavation publication, but it will remain a significant one not just for the detailed analysis of the wooden structures but probably more importantly for the wealth of later prehistoric wooden artefacts from the site.