House - early medieval, An Lóthar, Co. Kerry

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House – early medieval, An Lóthar, Co. Kerry

At An Lóthar on the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, the ground holds a quiet layering of human occupation that stretches back through the early medieval period and beyond.

What survives as a recorded early medieval house sits above the traces of at least two earlier structures on the same spot, each one superseding the last over an unknown span of centuries. That kind of stratigraphic depth, three distinct phases of occupation compressed into a single location, is not unusual across Ireland's ancient landscape, but it is always worth pausing over.

The sequence runs roughly as follows. The earliest evidence on the site is a wooden structure built from driven stakes, the kind of construction familiar from early Irish settlements where timber was the primary material before stone became more common. That wooden building was then replaced by a circular stone structure, a form typical of early Irish domestic and agricultural life, where families lived and worked within round or sub-round enclosures of dry-laid or mortared stone. The early medieval house represents a third phase, built in the same area as these earlier remains. The full details of the site were compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan in their 1996 archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press, and the monument is recorded under National Monument No. 611.

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