Field boundary, Maulagowna, Co. Kerry

Co. Kerry |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field boundary, Maulagowna, Co. Kerry

On a north-west-facing slope at Maulagowna in County Kerry, a network of ancient field walls is slowly disappearing into the bog.

What remains is fragmentary but legible: a collapsed drystone wall running roughly east to west, only about fifteen centimetres above the surface in places, with subsidiary walls branching off to the north and south. Together, the surviving traces cover an area of roughly 160 metres by 70 metres, a modest agricultural footprint that speaks to a former attempt to impose order on rough hill pasture overlooking the valley of Lough Inchiquin.

Drystone construction, which uses carefully stacked stones without mortar, was the dominant method of field enclosure across Ireland for millennia, and walls of this kind can be notoriously difficult to date without excavation. What makes this site quietly compelling is the presence nearby of a possible fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stones and charcoal, usually found close to a water source and generally associated with the Bronze Age. The proximity of a fulacht fia to these field walls raises the possibility that the agricultural landscape here is considerably older than it might first appear, though the relationship between the two features remains unconfirmed. The bog that has swallowed much of the wall is itself a kind of slow archive, preserving what cultivation and abandonment left behind.

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Pete F
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