Hut site, Baslickane, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, three shallow hollows pressed into the ground mark what may be all that remains of ancient human habitation.
Each depression is roughly circular and averages about two metres across, sitting close against the inner face of an enclosing bank in the south-eastern quadrant of the site. Easy to walk past without a second glance, they are the kind of feature that rewards a patient eye.
These depressions are interpreted as possible hut foundations, the faint ground-level traces left when a circular structure, likely timber or wattle with an earthen floor, settles and degrades over centuries. The association with a surrounding bank suggests this was once an enclosed settlement, a type common across early medieval Ireland, where a family or small community would have lived within a defined, protected space. The site at Baslickane was recorded as part of a systematic archaeological survey of South Kerry compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996, which brought together evidence of the peninsula's long and layered occupation into a single scholarly reference.