Boulder-burial, Uragh, Co. Kerry

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Burial Sites

Boulder-burial, Uragh, Co. Kerry

A flat-topped boulder, roughly the size of a large kitchen table, sits raised off the ground on four supporting stones in a rough pasture above Lough Inchiquin in south-west Kerry.

That alone would be worth pausing over, but what makes this particular spot so quietly arresting is the density of prehistoric activity concentrated around it. The boulder-burial sits at the centre of a multiple-stone circle, and carved into the surface of the boulder itself are small cupmarks and linear incised markings, V-shaped in section, the kind of abstract prehistoric decoration whose exact meaning has never been satisfactorily explained.

A boulder-burial is a form of megalithic monument found almost exclusively in south-west Ireland, in which a large capstone is raised on smaller supporting stones, typically over or near a burial deposit. This example, recorded by Twohig in 1987, measures 1.65 metres by 1.2 metres with a thickness of around half a metre, and is orientated on a NE-SW axis. The stone circle in which it stands is not the only prehistoric feature in the immediate area. Directly abutting the axial stone of the circle is a fulacht fia, a type of burnt mound associated with Bronze Age cooking or industrial activity, typically identified by a distinctive horseshoe-shaped spread of fire-cracked stone and charcoal. And roughly eight to ten metres to the south-west, three further boulder-burials stand as a group. The concentration suggests this north-facing terrace above the lough was used repeatedly, perhaps over generations, as a place of some communal or ceremonial significance.

The site sits in rough pasture on a slope that looks out over Lough Inchiquin, and the surrounding landscape is characteristically west Kerry, open and sometimes waterlogged underfoot. The cupmarks on the capstone are small and may require low-raking light to be clearly visible.

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