Hut site, Beheenagh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Beheenagh, Co. Kerry

Scattered across the Dingle Peninsula, early medieval enclosures called raths, ringforts defined by a single earthen bank and ditch, are common enough features of the Irish landscape.

What makes the one at Beheenagh quietly interesting is what survives inside it: three shallow depressions in the ground, the probable footprints of hut-sites that once stood within the enclosure's protection.

The rath at Beheenagh is classed as univallate, meaning it has a single enclosing bank rather than the double or triple rings found at more elaborate sites. Within that enclosure, three probable hut-sites have been identified. One sits against the north-western bank, an irregular hollow roughly three metres across and a quarter of a metre deep. The other two lie in the western sector of the interior, side by side and apparently connected by a passage between them; they measure approximately three metres and three and a half metres at their widest, and reach up to a metre in depth. Whether those two adjoining hollows once held a pair of small dwellings sharing a common entrance, or served different functions within the same household, is not something the ground surface alone can answer. The site was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, a landmark regional study published under the Irish-language title Corca Dhuibhne.

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