Field boundary, Killoe, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Killoe, Co. Kerry

At Killoe on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, an old field wall runs directly up against the side of a prehistoric tomb.

It is the kind of detail that passes unnoticed in a landscape full of stone, but it speaks to centuries of continuous agricultural use, with later farmers building their boundaries around, and in some cases incorporating, whatever was already standing in the ground.

The site sits alongside a slab-built structure identified as a probable hut site, positioned just three metres to the north of the tomb. Slab-built hut sites, constructed from large flat stones set on edge to form low walls, are a recurring feature of the Kerry landscape and are associated with early medieval settlement, though they can be difficult to date precisely without excavation. The proximity of the field wall, the tomb, and the hut site at Killoe suggests a long palimpsest of occupation, where different generations left their mark in stone within a very small area. The site was documented by de Valera and Ó Nualláin in 1982, and later drawn into the wider archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996.

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