Community archaeology dig at Kilmocholmóg near Lurgan
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00:00I've been farming here for about 40 something years now and this is a field that wasn't an
00:27original part of the farm whenever the galleries came here but was purchased
00:32later on from a neighbour Hugh Pritchard in 1874 but we did know of a name on the
00:39field through the memory of the housekeeper who looked after the galleries
00:45when she would have come here as a young girl serving girl and then she kept kept
00:49the place going in later years of Mary Mary McAnally and she knew the field name
00:55was Kilmahamug because it's not marked field and it isn't named on the farm map
00:59that I have but where some of the other original gallery fields are but only for
01:05her I wouldn't know the name and we wouldn't have been able to follow up the
01:09clues I suppose my father understood Irish and the translation of Kilmahamug is
01:19literally the church of my young Kilmahamug Frank Macquarie who's our local historian but
01:27however that is it's more of an expression of affection so it's my dear Kilmahamug
01:33a name on the farm in 1812.
01:35Sanuna Mulholland Vanula Macconville, her dad said to me in 1964 talked about Kilmahamug whenever
01:48Vanula's dad said to me about this Kilmahamug and gave me the derivation, Kil's been in church
01:55Kilmahamug, the church of my dear friend, Kilmaham, that left a huge impression on my mind that day.
02:03and since that there I would have had tried to explore and done a lot of field work between
02:11Antrim town down to Lurgan town and beyond. This is what I'm interested in what there's a settlement
02:22here we didn't know anything about but it was a place name the early Christian place name that
02:27drew us here and at the minute I don't think there's been anything found to affirm that place
02:35name as a religious site but in the work that I'm attempting to do it must be one of that pathway
02:43from Trummeroo beside Myra to Machinaga which is on the loch shore I reckon that this site here is part
02:51of an early Christian or a medieval a pilgrim path where there was a lot of freedom and
02:57the woods there were really no boundaries as long as there was water and yet a clearing
03:02yet a livelihood and you're left alone to pray.
03:11So this is the second season of excavation we have had at the site
03:15the first season we initially came down because there was a local tradition of a church here
03:19potentially a graveyard so we came down last year and we opened some very small trenches
03:24and we found bits of sediment pottery some metal work and slag and a couple of potential archaeological
03:32features so we've come back this year to widen out in that initial work and see what turns up so
03:38the nature of the site is revealing itself a little bit more we one of our features appears to be
03:44possibly a ditch it's about a meter wide and it appears to be cutting across just maybe the top of the
03:48the hill here enclosing something so if it is a ditch we're maybe leaning slightly more towards the
03:55ecclesiastical site and we're also finding lots more suits to do more pottery and we're getting lots
04:02more iron slag glass slag as well appears to be coming up which would suggest sort of maybe higher
04:08status metal working and we're also finding we find a chunk of a lignite bracelet so lots and lots of
04:15wonderful finds and the main thing about this site is to get the community engaged and involved with
04:20their local heritage and history as you can see today it's a phenomenal response uh with everybody
04:26down working school groups and local volunteers and everything so it's a wonderful project to be part of
04:31my friend sent me a link on facebook uh last year and uh it had just said uh do you like to dig and i
04:49thought myself oh that sounds interesting because i've always been interested in you know in archaeology
04:55since i was a very very young girl and uh the time team didn't help either i think i've watched every
05:01episode of that um just i came along i was i was was welcomed into the the trenches i was taught a lot
05:10i have learned so much so much more just by having hands-on experience in the soil and i have i couldn't
05:19recommend it enough it is fantastic and it's such a good feeling a feeling of achievement whenever you find
05:25something at the end of the day you don't want to leave you just wanted to keep on going but
05:30unfortunately we have to put the trials down and go home so um yes it's uh it's the best thing i've ever
05:36done honestly yeah well uh two two days we had the primary schools and they were fantastic they were
05:45very engaged in what we're doing here so there were um some of them the teachers actually thought that
05:50the ones who wouldn't be interested were the ones who were asking most of the questions um mostly
05:56about dinosaurs but at least they were asking questions i'm absolutely thrilled to be on this dig
06:08it's the first one i've ever been to so i'm excited and all of the volunteers who are working away
06:14seem to be really really enjoying themselves it's a huge community project organized by craig avon
06:21historical society and i think they've had something like 150 volunteers and uh hundreds of people coming
06:29to the open day which i think is just a wonderful thing um that people are getting involved in their
06:36heritage this project has been funded by the national lottery heritage fund and the money from that comes
06:43from all of those wonderful national lottery players so thank you to them because this is really good
06:50local history and people getting their hands on fantastic local history and learning things
06:56and really feeling everything from neolithic mesolithic pottery to citrine pottery ware to now the exciting
07:04possibility of an enclosure so i think this this is just going to keep on giving so it's a fantastic project
07:10project well um i saw we post on facebook and uh well my mom showed it to me and then she asked me
07:17what i thought about it and it already volunteered so um well been helping dig out these parks for for
07:23now i'm just trying to get down the dirt and you know see what we can find found a few bits of pottery
07:31and then i found a few bits of broken flint that they believe might have been bit the tools
07:36and then well yeah that's about it yeah i've been being honest with you found a lot of dirt to be
07:41fair but it's been really good crack no it's a really good experience so i really enjoyed it i don't
07:46know i always loved history and just the idea that you get the opportunity to find what's left of it
07:52just to actually out in the fields get to experience it just seemed like it'd be really cool
07:57as an english teacher i like to do other enrichment classes with the students and i thought this would
08:09be a fabulous idea to get the students out to learn about history to learn about the land and get out of
08:16the classroom and do some education out in the air we have about 20 students today and we had another
08:22group with us on monday and they've thoroughly enjoyed it and we're coming back again tomorrow
08:26so they're looking forward to it again um lots of benefits i mean the soft skills involved like
08:32teamwork communication and meeting deadlines and things like that obviously but it's even just getting
08:38out into the air it's um learning how to use different tools from shovel speeds to trials to
08:46work with their hands they're doing nice calesthetic learners learning to feed for the soil for
08:49different rocks so it's i mean it's a whole holistic way of of learning and great feedback from other
08:56students they have talked about some of the fines like the different types of pottery and how many
09:03years ago it was and they are called themselves mini indiana jones so yeah it's been great fun and
09:11we've been very lucky with the weather but yeah looking forward to it again next year hopefully
09:15yeah so we were instructed to sort of find rocks that felt a bit unusual
09:19so we were just putting anything that felt a bit weird and usual and we came across a part of a
09:25bracelet so um yeah it was great showed great excitement amongst all the archaeologists they were
09:32delighted and yeah so finding the site well done
09:38i tell all the volunteers just anything that looks strange just throw it and throw it into the tray and
09:43i'll come and have a look at it later and then we went over and met many of them lots of stones just
09:51turn up and just could you look through your tray there and see if there's anything and literally
09:54just looked through the tray and the lignite bracelet was there so that's a nice little
09:58personal item so as the pot the pottery itself is all great and you know it's for cooking but you
10:03think that's a little decorative piece that someone's wearing and it's obviously the bracelet's broken and
10:06they've lost it so it's a slightly more human element behind it so um we're going to look at some of the
10:18finds that we find here on site so the first thing we're going to have a look at is some of our early
10:22medieval pottery so this is very typical uh domestic pottery uh used for cooking vessels and things like
10:28that we've got loads and loads of rims and bases so this will help us to do a vessel count across how
10:32many things are actually here and this is some of our nice pottery here and this dates to about 700
10:37a.d roughly um some of the other early medieval artifacts we've got include some lovely decoration
10:45wares which were being put on people themselves so this is part of a lignite bracelet uh lignite's a
10:51type of shale and it's been polished down and it would have probably just been a little bangle which
10:56is really nice the other piece we've got is a very small fragment um of blue glass bead again this is
11:05very personal to somebody so these artifacts it's great to have the cooking um vessels and all those
11:10things in the working part of the site but to have these kind of artifacts really brings a personal
11:14touch um to the site as well and when we say about a working site we think here possibly we've got
11:21metal working and we think that because of these large pieces of what we call hearth cake
11:25which um show that there's been massive amount of metal working and this would have been sitting
11:29in the bottom of a furnace the other thing as well which you find which was one of our
11:33really lovely finds of the site uh so this would have been to cast bronze silver and gold ingots
11:38across the site and we haven't found it yet but hopefully we will the other really nice thing about
11:42this artifact is this is one face and actually there would have been a second mold on the back here
11:47whether or not that broke when they were doing it and they just turned it over to make a new one
11:51uh we don't know but this is lovely lovely artifact uh the other thing we've got is a homestone which
11:58this would have been used to sharpen blades again adding to the working um aspect of the site to
12:02look at what actually would have been happening here and although there is lots of early medieval
12:07artifacts we also have evidence of prehistoric archaeology as well so we've got some nice flint scrapers
12:13uh for these would have been for taking um hides and prepping hides and also we've got a polished part
12:20of a polished stone axe as well so we can't we do have evidence here from prehistoric right through
12:25to the early medieval period which is great it's been absolutely mind-blowing i mean when you thought
12:37maybe there has been a church here in ancient times it's still not definitively brewing but
12:49when the fines go back right to the nihilistic and that's that's a very very long time ago
12:57so to think that this land has been peopled and used and farmed that far back yes it's just incredible
13:07so no no and and if we do go on and if we're lucky enough that funding is secured for next year
13:13a lot of these folk that have been with us all year uh our all during this project they're going
13:18to be back and we've seen that from last year there were folk who came and they're here again
13:23and so many of the ones that are new to us i wish you'd known about this last year i'd have been here
13:27then too so it's a tremendous experience and you finish up just with a huge big family
13:37that's that's what's the the best thing about it for me uh beyond beyond what they actually find is
13:43that the the feeling that we're connected to so many people without common interest it it's just
13:48wonderful
14:05the people here are committed to what they're doing and following instructions and they maybe not really
14:13that maybe know what the end product is for a long time and yet today is a very happy day there's a
14:19lovely atmosphere here today so there is and they i i just think it's a privilege for me to be here
14:27if i knew that came to my house and brought me here so she did so that would be my impression
14:33that could be the basis of a hobby for life here there's a knowledge to and to develop your knowledge
14:41and there's an urge at the minute also that will come closer and closer to nature and we're doing
14:47this we're doing that here within a controlled environment to do something really useful that
14:53would benefit us in years to come
15:01so so last year when we came here we opened um six very small trenches uh and in them trenches we found
15:11domestic sort of pottery uh some stone sort of collapse and a couple of subsoil cut features
15:17so we obviously have come back this year to open out and excavate more to try and ascertain a bit more
15:24of what the site is so um our subsoil cut feature has turned into uh a sort of large ditch about two and
15:34a half meters wide a little bit of a meter twenty deep so and it's been full of lots and lots of
15:40artifacts and we think the ditch is sort of running around in closing a wee bit of this sort of rise
15:46behind me here um at the minute it's looking last year we were kind of thinking we're obviously in here
15:52looking potentially for a church um an early medieval church but uh oh it was either that or uh i am
16:04just a simple domestic farm possibly unenclosed but i think we're now looking at something
16:10maybe slightly higher status just with the amount of evidence of metal working that we've been getting
16:15out and stuff like that there we also got the ingot molds and stuff like the ingot mold and then
16:21and whatnot so and lots of iron slag so we're looking at a sort of slightly higher status site
16:26than your sort of uh typical domestic farmstead of the time so
16:31and this is the first dig we the kriamblistorial society has been involved in and it's really an
16:37opportunity for us to provide an opportunity for people you know to really physically uncover their
16:43history and their heritage and we've really been uh overwhelmed by the response uh people of all
16:48ages people of all backgrounds all coming uh to the common purpose of finding out what was going on here
16:54a thousand years ago so the kriamblistorial society has been in existence for over 50 years
16:59we're a society which covers the the history of the craigalvin area including the ties of port of
17:04die lurgan central krigalvin and all the surrounding villages and as part of this project we're really
17:10seeking to raise awareness of society and under work if we're going to continue for another 50 years
17:15we do need new people to join us and we are delighted to see that as part of the community
17:20archaeology dig we've been joined by so many new faces and we're hoping some of them will join us
17:24and if you'd be interested in joining us you can find out more on our website
17:27www.agavanhistoricalsociety.org.uk
17:57www.agavanhistorical.uk
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