Enclosure, Parkgarve, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Parkgarve, Co. Galway

Sometimes the most telling thing about an archaeological site is its complete absence.

At Parkgarve in County Galway, a circular enclosure once sat in low-lying grassland, its earthen ring measuring roughly sixty metres across. A house now occupies the spot, and nothing visible remains at ground level. The monument survives only on paper, traced onto the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps that were produced in the nineteenth century, when the feature was still legible in the landscape.

Circular enclosures of this kind are among the most common archaeological forms in Ireland, typically interpreted as the enclosed farmsteads of early medieval communities, though some examples are earlier or later. They are usually defined by a bank and ditch, creating a roughly circular boundary around a domestic or agricultural space. The Parkgarve enclosure, at sixty metres in diameter, falls within the range of a typical example. At some point between its appearance on the OS maps and the present day, construction of a house obliterated whatever earthwork survived, leaving no surface trace of the monument.

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