Enclosure, An Gabhlán Beag, Co. Kerry

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Enclosures

Enclosure, An Gabhlán Beag, Co. Kerry

At An Gabhlán Beag on the Dingle Peninsula, there is something that barely qualifies as a presence at all.

A semi-circular arc of low walling, roughly fifteen metres across and so worn down as to be almost indistinguishable from the surrounding ground, is all that remains of what may once have been a circular enclosure. These enclosures, common across early medieval Ireland, typically defined a domestic or agricultural space, sometimes surrounding a dwelling, a farmstead, or land associated with a small community. Here, the evidence is reduced to the faintest suggestion of a curve in the earth, the kind of feature that most walkers would pass without a second glance.

The site was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, a detailed regional study covering the area around Ballyferriter in the west of Kerry. Even at the time of that survey, the walling was described as barely discernible, which places it among the more ghostly entries in the archaeological record of a peninsula already dense with ancient remains. The tentative language in the description, noting only that the arc "may be" the remains of a circular enclosure, reflects an honest uncertainty. The structure has not yielded enough of itself to be classified with confidence.

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