Hut site, An Bhánóg Theas, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
At the head of a small valley on the Dingle Peninsula, on a south-east facing slope looking down towards Ballynasare, a low circular wall sits quietly inside an older earthen enclosure.
The wall stands less than half a metre high now, its stones spread to a width of between one and one and a half metres, describing a circle roughly nine metres across. It is easy to pass such things without registering what they are, which is part of what makes them worth pausing over.
The outer enclosure is a univallate rath, meaning a roughly circular earthwork defined by a single bank and ditch, a form of enclosed settlement that appears widely across Ireland from the early medieval period onwards. Inside this one, the circular structure at its centre is interpreted as a hut site, the collapsed remains of what was once a roofed dwelling. The site sits within the townland of An Bhánóg Theas and was recorded as part of the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey published in 1986 by J. Cuppage, a survey that documented the extraordinary concentration of prehistoric and early medieval remains across the Dingle Peninsula. The placement of the rath at the valley head, on a slope with an outward view, follows a pattern common to such enclosures, where a degree of visibility over the surrounding land seems to have mattered to whoever chose the spot.