Field system, Lanestown, Co. Dublin

Co. Dublin |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Field system, Lanestown, Co. Dublin

At Lanestown in County Dublin, an entire ancient landscape lies underfoot without leaving so much as a ripple on the surface.

Walk across the wide, flat field at the western end of the townland and you would notice nothing unusual. The archaeology here exists only as a crop mark, the kind of ghostly imprint that appears when buried features cause the soil above them to retain moisture differently, producing subtle variations in the colour and growth rate of crops that are invisible at ground level but legible from the air.

The site was identified through a Digital Globe orthoimage, a high-resolution satellite photograph, taken between 2011 and 2013. That image revealed not only a field system, the boundaries and divisions of what was once a managed agricultural landscape, but also two associated enclosures within the same field, recorded in the Sites and Monuments Record as DU012-075 and DU012-076. The find was noted in the SMR file and communicated by T. Condit, with the record compiled by David O'Connor and later updated by Christine Baker, uploaded to the national record in January 2015. The precise date of the original field system is not yet established; crop mark evidence alone rarely settles questions of period, and without excavation or further survey the features remain dateable only in the broadest terms.

There are no standing remains to speak of, and the site sits within what is described as a vast open field, relatively flat and unbroken. For most visitors, the experience would amount to little more than standing in a field and knowing, on faith, that something is there. The value of the site is almost entirely archival, a reminder that the Irish landscape carries far more information than its surface suggests. Those with an interest in aerial and satellite archaeology, or in how the SMR documents features that would otherwise go entirely unnoticed, will find the record itself more rewarding than any visit to the field.

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