Archæological Excavations at Dunbeg Promontory Fort, County Kerry, 1977

This is a report of the archæological excavation of Dunbeg promontory fort, County Kerry, undertaken from June to September 1977. It includes a short account of the reconstruction work of the 1890s on the monument and the controversy that has since surrounded it. The earliest man-made feature located was a shallow ditch, partly overlain by the stone rampart, which produced a radiocarbon date at the end of the sixth century b.c. Despite a total lack of datable artefacts or occupation levels from the earthen defences, a radiocarbon date from the base of fosse 1 indicated that it was probably in existence in either the eighth or the ninth century A.D. The internal stone rampart was found to have two construction phases. Its relationship to the souterrain, which ran underneath part of the entrance-causeway, was also examined. Again, no datable artefacts or occupation layers were revealed. The clochán in the interior of the fort produced two distinct layers of occupation which both yielded radiocarbon dates at the end of the tenth century A.D. There is no evidence for occupation on this site after the tenth or eleventh century A.D., although a few stray finds of the nineteenth century were located during the excavation.