Museum to exhibit artefacts

CLARE Museum has taken possession of a number of artefacts discovered during excavations along the route of the recently opened M18 Gort to Crusheen road scheme.
The museum is to hold an exhibition early next year in a specially designed exhibition space on the top floor of the building, which will feature the artefacts unearthed by archaeologists working on the infrastructure project. According to a spokesperson for Clare Museum, the items offer a fuller picture of history in the area.
The exhibition will include pottery, stone tools and axes dating from the Neolithic period, along with glass and amber beads and a rare bone gaming piece, which date from the Iron Age period.
“From informal discussions with archaeologists, I understand that between Gort and Crusheen and south of Sixmilebridge, very little Neolithic pottery has been discovered to date. It is good to find some items from these parts as it gives a fuller picture of the history of the areas. It wasn’t just the items found that was of interest but there were also a number of notable sites discovered and recorded,” said John Rattigan, curator of Clare Museum.
Public lectures on the types of archaeological sites recorded during these excavations are also planned for next year. The results of the archaeological excavations are to be published in the NRA Monograph, Borderland: archaeological investigations along the route of the M18 Gort to Crusheen road scheme later in 2011. It is also intended that copies of the excavation final reports will be available in the archaeology section of the Clare Library website in due course.