Ogham stone, An Lóthar, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Stone Monuments

Ogham stone, An Lóthar, Co. Kerry

Some archaeological sites are remarkable for what survives.

This one is remarkable for what does not. At An Lóthar on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, two ancient features were once recorded: a cromlech, the term used for a megalithic tomb or large capstone monument, and an ogham stone, one of those upright slabs incised with the early medieval script that uses a series of notches and lines along a central stem to render names and words, typically in an archaic form of Irish. Neither can now be identified in the landscape.

The original observation came from a figure identified only as O'Connell, working on behalf of the Office of Public Works, who noted both the cromlech and the ogham at this location. The record was later taken up by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan in their 1996 archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press, which remains one of the more thorough regional surveys of its kind in Ireland. By the time that survey was compiled, neither feature could be traced. Whether they were removed, buried, broken up for field clearance, or simply mislocated in the original record is not known. The ogham stone in particular represents a loss worth pausing over. Kerry has one of the densest concentrations of ogham stones in Ireland, and even a single inscription can carry a personal name preserved across fifteen centuries or more.

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