Anomalous stone group, Dromore By.), Co. Cork

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Stone Monuments

Anomalous stone group, Dromore By.), Co. Cork

Two standing stones on a ridge in West Cork do not quite fit the usual categories.

They are not a stone pair in the formally recognised archaeological sense, nor a stone row, nor the remnant of a larger monument; they are classified simply as anomalous, which in the careful language of field archaeology amounts to an admission that something is present and significant, but that it does not slot neatly into any known type. That designation alone makes the site worth pausing over.

The stones stand atop an east-west ridge in the townland of Dromore, set in pasture on the north side of a field fence. They are spaced 10.5 metres apart and aligned along the same east-west axis as the ridge beneath them. The western stone is the taller of the two, reaching 2.6 metres in height and measuring roughly 1.4 metres across by 0.2 metres in depth, making it a substantial slab. Its companion to the east is somewhat shorter at 1.85 metres, and slightly broader relative to its thickness at 1.5 metres by 0.15 metres. Both are relatively thin, flat-faced stones of the kind sometimes described as blade-like in profile. The east-west orientation is worth noting: many prehistoric monuments in Ireland were positioned with deliberate attention to solar alignments, particularly sunrise and sunset at the solstices or equinoxes, though whether that applies here remains unresolved. The gap between the stones, and the fact that no other associated features have been recorded in the immediate area, is part of what makes classification difficult.

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