Hut site, Inis Na Bró, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
Off the Dingle Peninsula, on the small island of Inis Na Bró, a circular stone foundation sits quietly in the landscape, its walls built without mortar, its interior measuring roughly two and a half metres across.
This is An Bothán, a drystone hut site of the kind once used by people living and working on the margins of the Atlantic world. What makes it quietly arresting is not the structure alone but its surroundings: traces of an old field system and cultivation ridges remain visible nearby, the faint geometry of former labour pressed into ground that has long since stopped being farmed.
The site was recorded by O'Leary and Snodgrass in 1976 and later included in the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey compiled by J. Cuppage in 1986, a comprehensive study of the Dingle Peninsula that catalogued the remarkable concentration of early remains found across this corner of County Kerry. Drystone construction, in which stones are carefully laid and interlocked without the use of mortar or binding material, was the dominant building technique in this region for centuries, and circular foundations of this type are associated with a broad range of periods and uses, from early medieval settlement to post-medieval seasonal occupation. The cultivation ridges nearby, sometimes called lazy beds, point to small-scale tillage, most likely potatoes or grain grown to supplement a subsistence economy on difficult Atlantic terrain.