Earthwork, Aghacoora, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Earthwork, Aghacoora, Co. Kerry

In a tillage field in Aghacoora, County Kerry, the ground itself is keeping a secret that the naked eye would almost certainly miss.

A circular earthwork roughly 35 metres in diameter lies beneath the surface, invisible at ground level but revealed from above as a cropmark, a faint ghostly ring picked out by differential growth in the vegetation above it. Where buried ditches or banks alter the moisture and nutrients available to roots, the crops growing overhead respond accordingly, and from a sufficient altitude the outlines of long-vanished structures become legible again.

This particular site came to attention through analysis of Google Earth orthoimages, satellite photography taken from directly overhead to minimise distortion. The circular form, at approximately 35 metres across, falls within the size range typical of a ringfort, the most common monument type in the Irish countryside, usually dating to the early medieval period roughly between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Ringforts functioned primarily as enclosed farmsteads, their earthen banks and ditches marking the boundary of a family's domestic space. That this example survives only as a cropmark suggests the upstanding earthworks were levelled at some point, most likely by agricultural clearance, leaving no visible trace for anyone walking the field today.

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