Field system, Baur, Co. Clare

Co. Clare |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field system, Baur, Co. Clare

Spread across roughly 2.2 kilometres of the central Burren uplands in County Clare, a field system of considerable age quietly organises the limestone landscape between Poulnabrucky to the north-west and Poulanine to the south-east.

What makes it arresting is not any single feature but the sheer density of what lies within its boundaries: three wedge tombs, eight cairns, five cashels, and several enclosures, all contained within a framework of field boundaries that has been shaped and reshaped by successive generations of people living and farming on this karst plateau.

Wedge tombs are among the latest of Ireland's megalithic tomb types, generally associated with the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age, while cashels are stone-walled ringforts typical of early medieval settlement, often enclosing a farmstead or small community. The presence of both within the same field system reflects something characteristic of the Burren more broadly: prehistoric and medieval elements are so thoroughly interwoven across these uplands that it is often impossible to disentangle one period from another. The boundaries visible today on aerial and satellite photography represent only part of the picture. Much of the system almost certainly continues beneath scrub vegetation, and in places different field systems likely connect, suggesting that what can currently be mapped is a fragment of something far more extensive.

The Burren's exposed limestone pavement and thin soils have, paradoxically, preserved ancient field boundaries that would have been ploughed away or built over elsewhere in Ireland. The orthophotographs that reveal this particular system across Baur North and South give a sense of how aerial observation has transformed our understanding of the uplands, pulling patterns out of the rock and scrub that ground-level inspection alone would never disclose.

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