Anomalous stone group, Inchinanagh, Co. Kerry

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Stone Monuments

Anomalous stone group, Inchinanagh, Co. Kerry

On the south-facing slopes of Knockantooreen in south-west Kerry, two small stones protrude from the surface of a bog on a low hillock, arranged along an east-west line and standing just over a metre apart.

The word "anomalous" in the site's designation is doing quiet but significant work: these stones do not fit neatly into any of the recognised categories of Irish prehistoric monument, and that ambiguity is precisely what makes them interesting. They are not dramatic, but they are deliberately placed, and something about their arrangement suggests intention rather than accident.

The eastern stone, roughly square in plan at its base and leaning slightly to the south-east, stands about 0.8 metres above the bog surface and is oriented on a north-east to south-west axis. The western stone is upright, rectangular in plan, and somewhat shorter at 0.64 metres, oriented along the east-west line of the pair. A third element complicates the picture further: a low, narrow stone, only 0.18 metres in height and quite flat, lies parallel to and immediately north-east of the western stone. That third stone, in particular, resists easy classification. It could be a fallen or collapsed element, or it could always have been recumbent, serving some purpose within whatever arrangement was originally intended. The rough hill pasture setting, with rocky ground and boggy cover, means the stones have likely sunk or shifted over time, and what is visible now may be only part of a more complex original grouping.

The site sits in the kind of landscape that rewards slow attention rather than a quick glance. The bog surface preserves things poorly in terms of visibility but well in terms of survival, and there may be more buried here than the three exposed stones suggest.

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