Burial ground, Kilteenbane, Co. Kerry

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Burial Grounds

Burial ground, Kilteenbane, Co. Kerry

Along the bank of the Finglas river on the Dingle Peninsula, a loose arrangement of upright stones occupies a semi-circular area that nobody can quite explain.

Local tradition holds that the ground at Kilteenbane is a burial place, but the stones themselves refuse to confirm it. A surface inspection alone is not enough to classify the site with any confidence, which leaves it occupying an awkward category: something that looks deliberate, or might be, or might not be at all.

What the eye can make out is this. The western boundary of the roughly semi-circular enclosure, which measures approximately 30 metres north to south and 10 metres east to west, is formed naturally by the river bank. Along the eastern side, eight upright stones, together with a large boulder to the north, describe an almost straight line running roughly north-north-west to south-south-east for about 12.5 metres. The stones alternate between taller and shorter, ranging in height from around 1.35 metres down to 0.65 metres, and a few additional boulders on the eastern edge appear to be naturally positioned rather than placed by human hands. Whether the alternating rhythm of the standing stones reflects intention or coincidence is precisely the kind of question the site declines to answer. The description comes from J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, the Dingle Peninsula survey published under the title that gives the area its Irish identity, and even that careful survey stopped short of a firm classification. The tradition of burial persists in the locality without documentary support, and the stones stand in their ambiguous line, somewhere between a monument and a geological accident, beside a river that has been running past them for rather longer than anyone has been wondering what they mean.

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