Standing stone, Baile An Ghleanna, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Baile An Ghleanna, Co. Kerry

Sometimes the most telling archaeological record is an absence.

At Baile An Ghleanna in County Kerry, three small fields arranged in a triangle, bounded by three roadways, carry the Irish name 'Gort an Ghalláin', meaning roughly 'the field of the standing stone'. The stone itself is gone, but the name has outlasted it, preserved in the landscape like a caption for something no longer on the wall.

The identification of this site rests almost entirely on that placename, recorded by M. Ó Dubhshláine and included in J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, 'Corca Dhuibhne: Dingle Peninsula Archaeological Survey'. Standing stones, or galláin in Irish, were erected throughout prehistoric Ireland for purposes that remain debated, ranging from territorial markers to burial monuments to astronomical alignments. The Dingle Peninsula has a notable concentration of them, so the former presence of one here would not be unusual. What is unusual is that the only surviving evidence is linguistic rather than physical. The triangular arrangement of fields and roads may itself reflect how the surrounding landscape was organised around the stone over centuries, with boundaries gradually replacing the monument they once circumscribed.

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