The Rath of Dreen 9 



the plan. This is built in the style of the ordinary souterrain, 

 but is almost completely above the ground level, with soil heaped 

 over it, a rather unusual form of construction. At some time a 

 gap was made in the vallum on the east side, and the soil thereby 

 removed was thrown into the trench to make an easy entrance 

 for cattle. I fancy that in doing this a second chamber of fhe 

 earth house was destroyed, as the foundation of the eastern side 

 wall seems to extend somewhat in that direction. The proprietor 

 of the farm, Mr. W. J. Kernoghan, gave his consent to, and 

 otherwise assisted in the investigation of the Rath, and we spent 

 Easter Monday and the two following days at the work, with 

 five men. 



We first dug a trench round the outside of the vallum in 

 the hope of finding the midden where refuse might have been 

 thrown out from the dwellings inside. The depth of the peaty 

 mud however we found to be from four to five feet, and as we 

 dug, water gathered in the excavations, compelling us to abandon 

 the search in the trench. 



We then i)ut some of the men to remove the sods carefully 

 from the hut sites, while the othei's dug trenches at regular 

 intervals over the airlis. Except at one spot near the southern 

 end of the gap, where we found some coarse pottery, all the 

 archaeological remains were found in the hut sites. 



In these, immediately beneath the sods, the earth was black 

 and sooty, containing numerous fragments of burned sticks and 

 bones of animals, a few pieces of iron, too corroded to enable us 

 to form any idea of their purpose, three stone axes and a con- 

 siderable number of fragments of pottery. All were lying on or 

 between a fairly regularly constructed series of hearths made 

 with ordinary large flat-topped field stones. A few fragments of 

 flint were turned up, but none of these seemed to belong to even 

 the crude type of implement generally described as " worked 

 flints." The utility of the iron fragments being so hopelessly 

 unrecognisable, we are confined to the pottery and the stone 

 axes in our theoretical deductions as to the age of the hut sites. 



