Enclosure, Craggaunoonia, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Enclosures
In the townland of Craggaunoonia, in the folds of the Kerry landscape, sits an enclosure that has been formally recorded as an archaeological monument but whose details remain largely unpublished.
That combination, officially noted yet substantively undescribed, places it in a category of Irish sites that are known to exist without being widely known at all.
Enclosures of this kind are among the most common and most varied features of the Irish archaeological record. The term covers a broad range of structures, from the circular earthen banks of early medieval raths, which served as enclosed farmsteads, to drystone-walled cashels and the more irregular boundaries associated with cultivation or ritual use. Without the specific survey data for this site, it is not possible to say which tradition Craggaunoonia's enclosure belongs to, how large it is, or what condition it survives in. The townland name itself, derived from Irish, hints at a rocky terrain, the element "creag" pointing to crags or outcrops, which is broadly consistent with the character of upland Kerry, where stone-built enclosures tend to endure better than earthen ones.
What can be said is that Kerry as a whole preserves an extraordinary density of such features, many of them unexcavated and uninterpreted, quietly occupying the margins of fields or hillsides without any marker or explanation. Craggaunoonia's enclosure is, for now, one of those.