Following in the footsteps of Gerhard Bersu at Freestone Hill and Stonyford, Co. Kilkenny. New contributions from magnetic surveys

Abstract

Freestone Hill, a five-acre multiphase univallate hillfort in south-east Ireland, was the location of Gerhard Bersu’s last major excavation in 1948–49. This paper describes the peculiar set of circumstances that led Bersu to undertake the excavations at Freestone Hill and it also describes two campaigns of magnetic surveys undertaken within the hillfort and in its environs in 2014 and 2018 by the Römisch-Germanische Kommission and Irish colleagues. These investigations produced highly significant results that provide a new landscape context for the late prehistoric activities within the hillfort and which augment the ground-breaking work on the site by the great German researcher.