Hut site, Killoe, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Killoe, Co. Kerry

On the south-eastern slopes of Bentee, in the rough pasture of the Iveragh Peninsula, a low sod-covered mound reveals itself as something more deliberate than it first appears.

What looks like a slight rise in the ground is in fact a drystone hut, built without mortar, its walls still standing to a height of around 85 centimetres and measuring roughly 3.6 metres by 2.5 metres inside. The plan is subrectangular, a shape common in early vernacular construction where corners were kept soft rather than squared off, and the walls are a full metre thick, suggesting the structure was designed to retain heat in an exposed upland setting.

Elevenmetres to the north, on a natural terrace in the hillside, two further structures complicate any simple reading of the site. Built from contiguous uprights, the stones set upright and touching rather than laid in courses, they are joined together and differ markedly in form: the northern one follows a rectangular plan of 4 metres by 3.6 metres, while the one immediately to its south takes an unusual triangular shape, 6.3 metres by 3.5 metres. The combination of a rounded hut below and two geometrically distinct enclosures above, one of them triangular, is unusual enough to prompt questions about function and sequence that the physical remains alone cannot easily answer. The site is recorded in the archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan and published by Cork University Press in 1996, which catalogued the dense concentration of upland remains across south Kerry.

The site sits close to a modern track, which makes it relatively accessible by the standards of upland Kerry archaeology. The slopes of Bentee are open grazing land, and the structures sit low enough in the vegetation that they reward a careful eye rather than a casual glance.

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