From the foothills of the Stack’s Mountains to the River Lee Valley, the N22 Tralee Bypass traverses a rich cultural landscape. The River Lee has played a central role in the human history of this area from the moment the first Mesolithic hunter-gatherers turned their boats upstream to explore the valley. In this book, we encounter a succession of men, women and children who made the river valley their home over the following 6,000 years. Among them are the pioneering farmers who built one of the region’s first houses in Manor East, and the prehistoric community who constructed a ceremonial avenue of timber posts in Ballingowan. We encounter people who witnessed the arrival of the first metalworkers in the Lee Valley, and find out how they parted with their dead. We cross the thresholds of modest homes that stood in Knockawaddra and Ballingowan at the dawn of Christianity in Ireland, and conclude with the abandoned cottages of 19th-century Lismore.

From the wood, charcoal and plant remains recovered from the excavations, we trace how Tralee’s hinterland has changed over the millennia as fields were carved from the dense post-glacial woodlands, and witness the efforts of more recent generations to improve the land and enclose it in the patchwork of fields and hedgerows we see today.

Authors

Patricia Long is a Managing Director at Rubicon Heritage Services Ltd and was Senior Archaeologist for the N22 Tralee Bypass project.

Paul O’Keeffe is an archaeologist with Transport Infrastructure Ireland and was Project Archaeologist for the N22 Tralee Bypass publication.

Isabel Bennett is an archaeologist living and working on the Dingle Peninsula. Isabel is editor of Excavations.ie and was editor of the Journal of the Kerry Archaeological Society.