Standing stone - pair, Drombohilly, Co. Kerry

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone – pair, Drombohilly, Co. Kerry

One of two stones at this site in Drombohilly has been lying flat for long enough that nobody now records when it fell.

The other still stands upright, rising 1.32 metres from the level pasture on the north-west bank of a small stream. The two stones sit roughly 0.7 metres apart, and if the prostrate one were ever raised again, the pair would align along an ENE-WSW axis, a orientation that recurs across prehistoric standing stone pairs in south-west Kerry and has prompted ongoing debate about whether such alignments were intended to track solar or lunar events on the horizon.

Standing stones erected in pairs are a recognised but still poorly understood monument type in the Irish archaeological record, found with particular frequency across County Kerry. They date broadly to the Bronze Age, though precise dating is difficult without excavation. What makes the Drombohilly pair quietly interesting beyond its own modest dimensions is what lies close by: an anomalous stone group sits approximately 8 metres to the south-west. The term anomalous is used in Irish field archaeology to flag a group of stones that does not fit neatly into any standard monument category, neither a clear alignment, nor a circle, nor a pair. Its proximity to the standing stones suggests the area may have held some sustained significance in the prehistoric landscape, though the nature of any relationship between the two features remains open.

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