Pit alignment, Carrowmore, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Pit alignment, Carrowmore, Co. Sligo

At Carrowmore in County Sligo, one of Ireland's most densely packed megalithic landscapes, there is a site that may not be a site at all.

Recorded on an aerial photograph as a possible pit alignment, the feature amounts to a faint row of circular and oblong marks running roughly north-north-west to south-south-east along the crest of a low rise. A single circle sits at the northern end, followed by three shallow, pit-like depressions, then a field fence cutting across the line, and finally two circles that appear to be joined. Whether these marks represent something genuinely ancient or simply the scuffed ground left by livestock feeding equipment is, honestly, an open question.

The feature entered the archaeological record as a pencil annotation on an air photograph sheet, described only as a 'Pit Alignment', and was carried forward into both the Sites and Monuments Record of 1989 and the Record of Monuments and Places in 1995 under the cautious category of 'Potential site, aerial photo'. Pit alignments, where they do exist as archaeological features, are sequences of deliberately dug pits that may have defined boundaries, marked out ceremonial routes, or served purposes that remain poorly understood. They are known from prehistoric contexts across Britain and Ireland, and Carrowmore's wider surroundings, rich in passage tombs and megalithic remains dating back thousands of years, would not be an unreasonable setting for such a feature. But the marks on the photograph are faint enough that the possibility of a more mundane explanation, circular impressions left by animal feeders placed in a line along a ridge, was specifically noted and never ruled out.

There is little point in visiting the spot. Farm outbuildings have since been constructed over the area, and the features visible in the photograph have almost certainly been covered or removed entirely. What remains is the photograph itself, a pencil note, and an entry in a register, a reminder that archaeology sometimes consists less of things found than of things wondered about and lost before they could be properly examined.

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