Ballygalley Neolithic site

Ballygalley Neolithic site is located in the village of Ballygalley, County Antrim, Northern Ireland on the Antrim coast, approximately 3 miles north of Larne. It features remains of a number of Neolithic houses on low ground AbOUT 500m from the shore of Ballygalley Bay.

1994 Investigations

In 1994 excavations were carried out on the site, 200m west of Ballygalley village, south of the main Ballygalley-Cairncastle Road. Excavations on an outer zone, running along the upper ridge of the raised beach, included charcoal blackened occupation soils with some worked flint and sherds of Neolithic pottery. Some worked flint and animal bone was recovered in other areas.

Further excavations in December 1994, led by Professor Derek Simpson of Queen's University Belfast excavated a group of three Neolithic longhouses. Vast quantities of flint artefacts of varying quality were found, mainly scrapers, but also flakes, cores and industrial flint waste, as well as porcellanite axes and flakes, pitchstone flakes, hammerstones, quern fragments, stone beads and pottery, most of which was plain shouldered and unshouldered bowls, but some of which was decorated late Neolithic pottery (mostly Sandhills Ware). The finds demonstrated wide trading links with the outside world, including many pieces of pitchstone from the Isle of Arran, stone axes from Great Langdale in Cumbria and Cornwall, pumice possibly from Iceland and rock crystal from as far away as Brittany.

One house was a large sub-rectangular structure, probably with a pitched roof and external annex, dated 3776 to 3386 BC. Einkorn wheat and cattle bones were found, suggesting it was a farming community. It would Appear that towards the end of the occupation period conditions were wet, from evidence of snail shells and caddis fly cases. The Neolithic people here did not seem to use the nearby maritime resources and even beads found were of stone rather than shells. Flint nodules may have been gathered from the nearby beach and porcellanite from Tievebulliagh and Rathlin Island. From the breadth of stone found, it seems likely that Ballygalley might have been some sort of redistribution centre or a ritual, public structure.

A small low cairn 6m to the north-west of one of the houses was found to be roughly 5m in diameter and featured a centrally placed setting of burnt stones resembling an elongated hearth. These lay on a compacted floor of small rounded stones and the whole area was then covered by larger more irregular shaped stones to form the cairn mass. A circular boulder wall enclosure was found 22m north of one of the houses comprising two parallel concentrically aligned settings of closely set basalt and dolerite boulders enclosing an area 12-15m in diameter. Finds from the enclosure consisted of a large quantity of flint, bones and teeth and a large quantity of seeds and other carbonised organic material.

Two of the houses were located 35m apart but differ in plan. One structure measures 4.8m by 5.6m and had internal support with a central load-bearing posthole 0.7m in depth. A large number of stakeholes were uncovered in and around the house. Seven un-urned human cremations were found in shallow pits to the south-west of this house, with finds including a barbed and tanged arrowhead and some undecorated Early Bronze Age pottery sherds. The site also produced a large quantity of pottery, flint manufacturing debris and artefacts, including several complete porcellanite axes and axe fragments, pitchstone flakes and rock crystal, a badly weathered schist axe and a small cache of hollow scrapers.

2003 Investigations

Excavations were carried out in the field adjacent to the earlier Neolithic houses site by Archaeological Development Services and found extensive flint-knapping surfaces with a few pottery-making pit kilns, and a sacred zone including at least two circular ditched structures which have been interpreted as small palisaded henges. Numerous ritual deposits included cone-shaped pits filled with flints. Pottery identical to the earlier site was found, from the early to the late Neolithic period. The entrance to one of circular structures had been partly blocked by a large post, recalling similar blocked henges in other parts of Ulster. Other finds included stone axes, arrow heads, a javelin head, flint tools such as blades and scrapers, and thousands of sherds of decorated pottery, with at least six complete smashed pots.