This is the fourteenth in a series of archaeological reports on individual road schemes in Ireland published by the National Roads Authority. River Road deals with the second phase of the southern ring road for the city of Limerick. The first phase has been published in a variety of journal articles. This volume presents a synthesis of the phase two investigations, including the initial environmental investigations, excavations and building surveys. It is accompanied by a CD-ROM containing the pdfs of the final excavation reports, the building surveys and the environmental report. There is a handy list of these reports in the book, so that further detail can be followed up easily in the grey literature reports.
The first chapter describes the area of the road scheme, being on the margins, the interface between the dry and the wet, along the banks of the Shannon. An area known to have floodplains behind attempted defences and found to have, in places, alluvium up to 17m thick, but also little in the way of visible intertidal archaeology in the road corridor. Despite these factors the authors note that better techniques for discovering sites in such conditions were developed during this project, so that the archaeologists found more sites than Phase I, despite being on supposedly 'poorer' land for archaeological remains. This project has resulted in new Guidelines for testing and mitigation of wetland archaeological heritage for national road schemes. This document is available as a free download from the NRA's website.
The chapter on prehistoric life and death is the longest in the book. It deals with both settlement and burial evidence, with prehistoric houses and burnt mounds much in evidence. There is an unusual burial with grave goods, a cremation from Peafield with two razors, the first time in an Irish context that more than one was found with a cremation. Much of the information on the razors is found in one of the cartouches called expert analyses. Unfortunately, this section also has a mistake where English Heritage's radiocarbon and Bayesian Analysis authority Alex Bayliss is referred to as a he and not a she.
The third chapter, dealing with the medieval remains, also has a first for Ireland in that one of the sites, Ballysimon 2, may be the first ringwork to be nearly completely excavated. However, despite the near total excavation, the evidence is not conclusive and it may not be Anglo-Norman and could be a Gaelic ringfort. Clearly, other large-scale excavations are needed for comparison.
The fourth chapter, on post-medieval remains, deals briefly with the historic building surveys of two bridges and a mill, but the bulk of the chapter is devoted to the remains of the brickmaking industry which once flourished on the banks of the Shannon. Remains of the industry included the production sites (brick clamps) and copious amounts of wasters. Some analysis of clay and bricks from the site was undertaken for the project and is published in another expert analysis cartouche.
There are two small negatives with this volume. Firstly, since it is a paperback the CD in its pocket is glued to the back cover, which makes holding it when it is open awkward. Secondly, although the title is well chosen and has layers of meaning, it is a pity that the subtitle didn't use the wonderful term 'sloblands' for alluvial ground.
Both this series and the other publications produced by the National Roads Authority, the facts that National Monuments Service and the National Museum of Ireland are statutory bodies, the simple aside that all finds and the paper archive will be deposited with the NMS and NMI will surely lead to many archaeologists on the British side of the Irish Sea who have struggled (and often failed) to find a repository at national or local level and to finding a publishing outlet for their work, regarding Erin with eyes even greener than her valleys.
The understanding of the importance which is attached to archaeology through to publication by the NRA is not only illustrated by these series, it is summed up in the preface of River Road by its chairman "The value of such investigations is only fully realised by appropriate dissemination of the results."