Anomalous stone group, Glenrevagh, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Stone Monuments
On the northern end of a low hillock in the undulating grassland of Glenrevagh, in County Galway, there is a stone arrangement that resists easy classification.
It has been logged as an anomalous stone group, a designation that carries its own quiet admission: something is here, something was clearly placed or built, but its precise nature and purpose remain uncertain. That kind of archaeological ambiguity is, in its own way, more interesting than a tidily labelled monument.
What survives is a subcircular cairn, a roughly mounded heap of stones that would originally have been constructed rather than accumulated by chance, measuring approximately 14.5 metres east to west and 12 metres north to south, and rising to around 0.75 metres at its highest point. It is poorly preserved and partially overgrown, which makes reading the site difficult. At its centre, two large set stones are visible, positioned at right angles to each other. Their arrangement has been noted as possibly indicating a cist, which is a small stone-lined burial box, typically associated with prehistoric interments. The word "possibly" is doing a lot of work here. Without excavation, it cannot be confirmed, and the site has not, on current evidence, been definitively assigned to any period or culture. The Ordnance Survey of Ireland's topographical files record the dimensions and configuration, but stop short of a firm interpretation.