Barrow, Skahanagh, Co. Kerry

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Barrows

Barrow, Skahanagh, Co. Kerry

In a field in Skahanagh, County Kerry, a prehistoric burial mound has all but disappeared into the landscape.

What was once a barrow, a raised earthen mound typically constructed over the remains of the dead during the Bronze Age or earlier, survives today only as a levelled enclosure, its original form so reduced that its identification as a barrow remains tentative rather than certain.

A field inspection recorded the site as a small earthwork, possibly of barrow type, its western edge cut through by a field boundary running north to south. That boundary, probably established centuries after the mound was first raised, bisects the site and has contributed to its gradual erasure. The combination of agricultural activity and the imposition of later field systems across older monuments is a familiar story in the Irish countryside, where the boundaries of modern landholding frequently overwrite much earlier traces without any deliberate intention to do so. What remains is enough to suggest the outline of something once more substantial, but not enough to say with confidence exactly what that something was.

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Pete F
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