Enclosure, Knockbaron, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Enclosures
In a field of pastureland at Knockbaron in County Galway, two small circular features sit quietly in the grass, roughly 54 metres apart, visible not to the eye of a passing walker but to the overhead gaze of satellite imagery.
Each measures around 10 metres in diameter, and their near-perfect circular outlines suggest something deliberate and old, though what exactly remains an open question.
The two enclosures were identified by Jean-Charles Caillère, who spotted them on aerial imagery and brought them to the attention of archaeologists. They may be ring-ditches, a type of feature typically associated with prehistoric funerary or ceremonial activity, created when a circular trench was dug around a burial or monument, leaving a crop mark or soil shadow that persists long after any above-ground structure has disappeared. At roughly 10 metres across, these are small examples, and their proximity to one another, oriented roughly north to south-south-east, raises the possibility that they were planned or used in relation to each other. Whether they share a date, a function, or simply a landscape is not yet known.