Standing stone, Cappagh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Stone Monuments
Some sites earn their place in the archaeological record by surviving; this one earns it by disappearing.
On a south-west-facing slope above the valley of the Sheen River in Cappagh, County Kerry, a modest standing stone once rose from rough peaty pasture. It was not especially large, measuring roughly a metre in height and half a metre across, and its orientation ran north-north-east to south-south-west. By the time anyone thought to look for it again, it was gone.
The stone was recorded around 1989, noted by a C. Murphy in what was then undisturbed boggy ground. Standing stones of this kind are among the most enigmatic monuments in the Irish landscape; they were erected at various points during prehistory, most commonly in the Bronze Age, and their purposes remain genuinely unclear. Some appear to mark boundaries or routeways, others may have had ceremonial or astronomical significance, and many seem simply to have mattered to the communities that raised them. This particular example was small by any standard, but its position overlooking the Sheen River valley suggests it was placed with some deliberate awareness of the surrounding landscape. Within a decade of its recording, land reclamation in the area had removed all visible trace of it. By 1999, nothing remained above the surface.