Anomalous stone group, Streamstown, Co. Galway

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Stone Monuments

Anomalous stone group, Streamstown, Co. Galway

In a field near Streamstown in County Galway, five low stone slabs stand on edge in a shallow arc, enclosing a small mound of earth and grass.

The whole arrangement is no more than thirty centimetres high at its tallest point, and it has resisted every attempt at confident interpretation. Archaeologists cannot say with certainty what it is, which is itself a fairly unusual thing to have to admit about a prehistoric stone structure in the west of Ireland.

The site sits a short distance north of a known megalithic tomb, the proximity of which has done little to clarify matters. The five slabs are contiguous, meaning they touch or abut one another, forming a partial enclosure rather than a scattered grouping. Inside that arc is a grassed-over stone mound, suggesting something was once gathered or constructed within this space. It may be the surviving fragment of a megalithic tomb, a burial monument typically built from large upright stones capped with a massive horizontal slab, with much of the structure long since removed or collapsed. Alternatively, it could be the remnant of a stone circle. But the remains are, in the measured language of the field record, insufficient to permit classification. What survives is real, deliberate, and old; it simply refuses to be pinned down.

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