Enclosure, Letterfinish, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Letterfinish, Co. Kerry

Some archaeological sites are remarkable for what they contain.

These two enclosures on the lower western slopes of Knocknagullion, in the Letterfinish area of south Kerry, are remarkable for what they no longer contain, or indeed for the fact that they no longer exist at all. Two small circular outlines, recorded on the second edition of the Ordnance Survey map, are all that officially marks their passing. The ground where they once stood has since been cutaway for peat extraction, leaving no surface trace.

The enclosures were tentatively identified as fionnán enclosures, a term referring to enclosures associated with rank grass or rough pasture, typically found in marginal or boggy ground and thought to relate to early agricultural land management rather than settlement or defence. They sat in boggy pasture on the lower slopes of Knocknagullion, an unremarkable but telling location for this kind of feature. Their identification and documentation comes from the 1996 archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, which drew on fieldwork across one of the more archaeologically dense regions of Ireland. By the time of that survey, the enclosures had already been lost to peat cutting, meaning they were recorded not from physical inspection but from the cartographic evidence of an older map.

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