Hut site, Ardfert Oughter, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Ardfert Oughter, Co. Kerry

Beneath a field in Ardfert Oughter, the ground holds the compressed remains of what was once a small enclosed settlement, its outline still readable in stone and earth if you know what you are looking for.

The site is a univallate ringfort, meaning it is enclosed by a single surrounding bank, in this case a well-defined construction of earth and stone. These ringforts are among the most common archaeological monument types in Ireland, generally associated with early medieval farming households, and this one preserves something rarer than the enclosure itself: the remains of two stone house sites still standing within its interior.

The northern part of the interior contains an oval stone structure measuring roughly 4.8 metres north to south and 4.2 metres east to west, with walls between 0.6 and 1 metre thick. About 2 metres to its west sits a second, slightly smaller sub-oval structure, 3.8 metres by 4 metres, with walls of the same thickness. Both are modest in scale, consistent with the kind of single-family or small-community dwelling typical of early medieval rural Ireland. Beneath each of the two stone structures lie depressions in the ground, one measuring 4 by 4.8 metres and the other 4.8 by 4.6 metres, suggesting that the visible stonework may overlie earlier or collapsed phases of occupation. Two fieldbanks also touch the ringfort on its east and west sides, hinting at a wider pattern of land organisation in the surrounding area. The site was documented in Catherine Toal's North Kerry Archaeological Survey, published in 1995.

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