Field system, Garraun Beg, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field system, Garraun Beg, Co. Galway

At Garraun Beg in County Galway, an ancient field system survives now only as a photographic memory.

The earthworks that once marked this landscape have been cleared away entirely, leaving no trace on the ground, and what we know of their shape comes from a single aerial photograph rather than anything a person walking the land today could observe.

The photograph in question, catalogued as CUCAP BDT 84, revealed several curving banks spread across an area roughly 220 metres from northwest to southeast and about 150 metres from northeast to southwest. Field systems of this kind, defined by low earthen banks that divided the land into discrete plots for cultivation or grazing, are scattered across the west of Ireland and can range in date from the prehistoric period through to the post-medieval era. What made this particular area of interest was the ambiguity of those curving banks: they may have formed part of an enclosure, a roughly circular or oval boundary that would suggest a more deliberate organisation of space, or they may simply represent an additional section of the adjacent field system, which itself comprised a number of small irregular fields. The question was never resolved on the ground, and now cannot be.

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