Earthwork, Mooghaun, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Ritual/Ceremonial
Mooghaun in County Clare is already famous for one extraordinary thing: the largest hoard of Bronze Age gold objects ever found in western Europe was unearthed here in 1854, scattered among the stones of a railway cutting.
But the townland holds more than that single spectacular discovery. An earthwork survives here too, quieter and less celebrated, sitting in a landscape that has been shaped by human hands for well over three thousand years.
Mooghaun is dominated by Mooghaun Hill Fort, one of the largest Iron Age hillforts in Ireland, its multiple concentric stone ramparts enclosing a substantial area of high ground above the south Clare countryside. Earthworks of various kinds frequently accompany such sites, whether as boundary markers, field systems, enclosures associated with farming or ceremony, or structural elements of a wider defended complex. Without more detailed recorded information specific to this earthwork, its precise date and function remain uncertain, but it sits within a locale so densely layered with prehistoric activity that almost any feature in the ground here carries potential significance. The gold hoard alone, some 150 or more objects including gorgets, bracelets, and lock-rings, points to a community of considerable wealth and organisation in the later Bronze Age, and the hillfort itself speaks to continued occupation and importance into the Iron Age.