Earthwork, Bohercuill, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ritual/Ceremonial
Most people who know what a ringfort is think of it as a self-contained thing: a roughly circular enclosure defined by an earthen bank or stone wall, the farmstead of an early medieval Irish family.
What survives at Bohercuill, in County Galway, suggests that the full picture was sometimes considerably more complicated than the enclosure alone.
Immediately to the east and south of a ringfort here, a series of low earthen banks radiates outward to form a roughly oval area measuring about 64.6 metres east to west and 35.6 metres north to south. Within that space, irregular small plots are still legible on the ground, along with at least two possible house foundations defined by low banks. One of these abuts the outer face of the ringfort itself at the north-east, running roughly north-north-west to south-south-east and measuring around eight metres long by two metres wide. A second, slightly further to the south-east and oriented east to west, is smaller at four metres by two. The whole arrangement reads as an annexe of sorts, a domestic extension beyond the ringfort's main enclosure, containing paddocks and what appear to be small structures. Annexes of this kind are known elsewhere in Ireland, and they suggest that the ringfort's circular bank was not always the outer limit of activity. Animals, crops, and perhaps additional household members may have occupied this looser, less formally defined outer zone, with the ringfort itself serving as the more secure inner core.