Cupmarked stone, Baile An Ghlaisín, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Stone Monuments
On the lower southern slopes of Ballynahunt mountain, three slabs of stone carry some of the most quietly perplexing marks that prehistoric people left on the landscape of the Dingle Peninsula.
Cup-marks, the shallow, circular depressions ground into rock surfaces during the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods, appear here in abundance, and the main slab alone carries at least 23 of them, alongside more complex motifs including cup-and-circle designs and a cup-mark enclosed within what appears to be a square, one side formed by a natural fissure in the rock. A radial groove extends from one cup-mark; another has a slight tail. Linear grooves run in two directions across the decorated surface, organising the composition in ways that remain genuinely opaque. Nobody is certain what cup-marks meant, or whether they meant the same thing across the centuries in which they were made.
The largest of the three slabs, measuring 1.5 metres by 1.2 metres, lies prostrate against a field fence. A sketch made by the Co. Kerry Field Club in 1945 recorded circles enclosing most of the cup-marks, but no trace of those circles survives today, raising the question of whether they were misread at the time or have since been lost to weathering. Thirty-five metres to the south, a second slab, cleared from the field at some point and piled with other boulders against a fence, holds 27 cup-marks of its own. A third, smaller boulder nearby carries a single possible cup-mark. The site sits immediately south of a field containing small cairns, among which graves are said to have been uncovered, suggesting this part of the hillside was used over a long period for purposes that were not purely agricultural. The archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, compiled by J. Cuppage and published in 1986, remains the principal source for the site's documentation.
The setting adds a layer of context that no amount of close reading of the stones themselves can quite supply. The slope faces south, looking out over the Anascaul valley and, through breaks in the coastal hills, as far as Dingle Bay and the Iveragh Peninsula. Whether the view mattered to whoever made the marks is unknown, but the position is deliberate in feel, neither hidden nor especially prominent, just placed on a hillside with a long sight line and the company of the dead nearby.