Enclosure, Aughkiletaun, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Enclosures

Enclosure, Aughkiletaun, Co. Kilkenny

Beneath a tilled field in Aughkiletaun, County Kilkenny, lies the ghost of a structure that has not been visible at ground level for perhaps centuries.

The site is known only through a cropmark, the faint but telling signature that buried archaeology leaves on the surface of growing crops during dry summers, when soil above a filled-in ditch retains more moisture and produces taller, greener plants than the surrounding ground. Seen from the air or a satellite, these variations in growth reveal outlines that are otherwise completely invisible to anyone standing in the field.

The enclosure came to light in imagery captured on 14 July 2018, when Jean-Charles Caillère and Simon Dowling identified it while examining Google Earth Pro satellite photography. What the imagery showed was an oval shape measuring approximately 48 metres on its northwest to southeast axis and around 35 metres across from northeast to southwest, defined by a fosse, which is the term for a boundary ditch typically dug to demarcate or defend an enclosed area. A gap roughly 5 metres wide in the northeast quadrant of the oval suggests a formal entrance. Enclosures of this general type are found widely across Ireland and can date from prehistory through to the early medieval period, though without excavation it is impossible to assign this particular example to any specific era or function. It might have surrounded a farmstead, a ceremonial space, or something else entirely.

The site sits in agricultural land, and there is nothing to see at the surface. Its existence, for now, is a matter of record rather than of landscape.

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