Field system, Reviewfields, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Ritual/Ceremonial
Beneath a working tillage field in Reviewfields, Co. Kilkenny, a ghost landscape lies pressed into the soil, invisible at ground level but legible from the air.
On aerial photographs taken in August 1996, distinct cropmarks reveal the outlines of an ancient field system, the kind of trace that only becomes visible when growing crops respond differently to buried ditches and banks beneath them, their roots finding either more moisture or more resistance depending on what lies below.
The field system takes the form of a large, roughly rectangular enclosure running northeastward from a circular enclosure, itself identified from the same aerial survey. The two features appear to be related, the rectangular layout expanding outward from the circular one as though organised around it. A fosse, that is a ditch, runs concentrically around the northern and north-eastern sector of the enclosure, sitting approximately 25 to 30 metres from it. Whether this represents a separate enclosure entirely or simply another element of the broader field system is not yet resolved, and the ambiguity is part of what makes the site interesting. Features like these are frequently associated with prehistoric or early medieval land use, periods when communities organised agricultural ground with considerable precision, even if the physical evidence above ground has long since been ploughed away.
