An early medieval wooden bridge at Clonmacnoise
Principal Investigators
Dr Aidan O’Sullivan and Donal Boland (Management for Archaeology Underwater)
Funding
Abstract
Underwater archaeological survey and excavation in the River Shannon at
Clonmacnoise, Co. Offaly between 1994 and 1998 led to the discovery,
survey and excavation of a substantial wooden bridge,
dendrochronologically dated to A.D. 804 making it the earliest yet
known bridge in Ireland. Artefactual finds from the riverbed adjacent
to the bridge include eleven dug-out boats, early medieval iron axes,
an eighth to ninth-century decorated copper-alloy basin, wooden and
iron artefacts, iron slag, a whetstone and animal bone. The bridge can
be interpreted in terms both of the growth of the adjacent monastic
settlement of Clonmacnoise and regional political developments in the
late eighth and ninth centuries AD. This project is now moving towards
publication as a monograph in the Clonmacnoise Studies Series.
