Standing stone - pair, Ballynafullia, Co. Kerry

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone – pair, Ballynafullia, Co. Kerry

On a level saddle of land descending southward from Barraduff Mountain in County Kerry, two prehistoric standing stones occupy a patch of rough grazing, one still upright, one long since fallen.

That one should remain standing while its companion lies prostrate and slowly disappearing into the peat is not unusual for paired stone monuments, but it gives the site an quietly lopsided quality, as if a conversation has been interrupted mid-sentence.

The upright stone is nearly rectangular in plan, measuring roughly 1.8 metres in length and just 0.22 metres across, with a height of about 1.9 metres above ground. It is orientated on a northeast to southwest axis, an alignment found frequently in Kerry's prehistoric stone pairs and sometimes associated with solar or lunar sightlines, though no specific astronomical function has been confirmed here. Its fallen companion lies around a metre to the north, 1.8 metres long and considerably broader at 1.1 metres, and is partially embedded in peat. Paired standing stones, sometimes called stone pairs, are a category of monument particularly concentrated in the southwest of Ireland, and their purpose remains genuinely uncertain; theories range from territorial markers to ceremonial alignments to commemorative posts, none conclusively proven. What is clear is that whoever raised these stones chose their location with some deliberation, setting them on a saddle of relatively flat ground within a mountainous landscape rather than on a summit or valley floor.

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