Concentric enclosure, Clooneyogan, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Enclosures
In the townland of Clooneyogan in County Clare, there sits a concentric enclosure, a type of monument that tends to raise more questions than it answers.
Concentric enclosures are among the more enigmatic features of the Irish archaeological landscape, consisting of two or more roughly circular or oval earthwork rings arranged one inside the other. Their function is debated: some are thought to be ceremonial or ritual in origin, others may have served as enclosures for high-status settlement, and a number appear to date from the prehistoric or early medieval periods. What makes them consistently interesting is the deliberate layering of boundaries, the careful construction of space within space, suggesting that whoever built them had a particular concern with defining and separating the interior from the outside world.
Clooneyogan itself is a quiet rural townland in Clare, a county whose limestone landscape preserves an unusual density of earthworks, enclosures, and field systems from various periods. The concentric form here places it in a relatively select category among Irish monuments, since while ringforts and simple enclosures are common, the double-ringed variety is far less frequently recorded. Without further detail it is difficult to say more about who built this particular enclosure, when, or precisely why, but its presence in the Clare countryside is a reminder that the county's archaeology extends well beyond its more celebrated megalithic and ecclesiastical sites.