Enclosure, Carrowmore, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Enclosures
At Carrowmore in County Mayo, there is a recorded enclosure, a site classified and counted among Ireland's archaeological monuments, yet one whose details remain almost entirely undisclosed.
The place exists in the official record, carries a designation, and sits somewhere in the landscape of north Connacht, but the specifics of what it looks like, how old it is, and what it once contained have not yet been made publicly available.
An enclosure, in the broadest archaeological sense, is simply a defined area bounded by a bank, ditch, wall, or some combination of these, and in Ireland such features can belong to almost any period, from the Bronze Age to the early medieval. The name Carrowmore derives from the Irish An Cheathrú Mhór, meaning the big quarter, a townland name found in several counties and usually indicating a subdivision of land with some historical or agricultural significance. Beyond these general observations, the record for this particular site is one that has not yet been filled in, leaving the enclosure in an unusual state, acknowledged but not yet described.