Barrow - embanked barrow, Carrownaglogh, Co. Mayo

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Barrows

Barrow – embanked barrow, Carrownaglogh, Co. Mayo

In a quiet field in Carrownaglogh, County Mayo, a low circular earthwork sits just 40 metres south of the Glenreeor Owenmore River, barely disturbing the level pasture around it.

What makes it quietly puzzling is that nobody is entirely certain what it is. It might be an embanked barrow, a type of prehistoric funerary monument in which a burial mound is enclosed within a surrounding earthen bank, forming a ring-like boundary around the central mound. Or it might simply be the remains of a hut site, the modest footprint of a long-collapsed dwelling. The ambiguity is not unusual in Irish field archaeology, but it gives this particular feature an unresolved quality that more legible monuments lack.

The structure is a slightly raised circular area around 10 metres in diameter, defined by a low, sod-covered bank of earth and stone roughly 2.5 metres wide. The bank stands only about 0.2 metres above the interior ground level, and 0.7 metres above the exterior, so it is a subtle thing, easily overlooked in passing. It is ringed by hawthorn and brambles, which frame it without quite concealing it. The bank has eroded somewhat at the north, and field clearance stones have been incorporated into its north-eastern and eastern sections over the years, blurring the line between ancient construction and the more recent tidying habits of local farmers. Interestingly, it does not appear on the Ordnance Survey six-inch map produced in 1837 to 1838, but it is marked on the 1922 edition, which suggests it either escaped the earlier surveyors' attention or became more clearly defined in the intervening decades. Lending some weight to the barrow interpretation is the presence of a ringbarrow on the opposite bank of the river, approximately 115 metres to the north-north-west. Ringbarrows, low circular earthworks also associated with burial practices, are sometimes found in loose groupings, and the proximity of the two features across the water is at least suggestive of a shared prehistoric landscape, even if it proves nothing definitively.

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