Ring-ditch, Skidoo, Co. Dublin

Co. Dublin |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Ring-ditch, Skidoo, Co. Dublin

A circular monument invisible to anyone walking through the field at Skidoo, near the Broadmeadow river in north County Dublin, exists almost entirely as a ghost in the soil.

No earthwork survives above ground. What betrays it is the differential growth of crops during dry summers, when buried features cause overlying vegetation to ripen at slightly different rates, producing patterns legible only from the air. What the aerial camera revealed here was a ring-ditch, a type of monument defined by one or more circular ditches, often interpreted as the remains of a prehistoric funerary or ritual enclosure, sometimes the eroded trace of a Bronze Age burial mound.

The site was first recorded as a positive cropmark in May 1991, captured in aerial photograph GB91.DB.02, which showed a circular enclosure defined by two concentric fosses, meaning two ditches running parallel to one another around a central area. The enclosure sits at the northern edge of a large field, bisected by a modern field boundary, on ground that slopes down eastward and southward towards the Broadmeadow river. It is one of three cropmarks identified within the same field, catalogued alongside two neighbouring monuments. By the time a Google Earth image was taken in July 2013, only the southern arc of the cropmark was still visible, suggesting that either soil conditions, crop rotation, or changes to the field surface had suppressed the northern portion. The record was compiled by Geraldine Stout and later updated by Christine Baker and Margaret Keane.

There is nothing to see at ground level, which is rather the point. The surrounding terrain is gently rolling, with hedgerows closing off views to the north and west, while the ground opens up extensively to the west and south towards the river valley below. For anyone interested in cropmark archaeology, the lesson the site offers is about method as much as monument; the enclosure exists primarily as a data point, confirmed from above and studied through the archive of aerial survey rather than through any physical remains a walker might encounter. The National Monuments record reference for this site is DU011-159.

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