Through the mill - excavation of an early medieval settlement at Raystown, County Meath

On a long, low ridge in the small townland of Raystown, Co. Meath, west of what is now Ashbourne, people began burying their dead in an enclosed cemetery in the early fifth century AD. This place was to endure for at least 600 years as a large farming settlement. The building and maintenance of a remarkable series of watermills and watercourses and the production of cereals defined the lives of ge…