Hut site, Baile An Lochaigh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
At the head of Com an Lochaigh, close to the northern bank of the Feohanagh river, a scatter of stones sits in a state that even archaeologists describe as very ruined and confused.
What survives, just about, are the remains of what may have been two conjoined huts and an enclosure, the kind of early settlement arrangement once common across the Dingle Peninsula but now largely reduced to low, ambiguous outlines in the landscape. The uncertainty built into the word "possibly" is part of the record here; this is not a site that announces itself.
The site lies within the territory historically known as Corca Dhuibhne, the westernmost reach of the Kerry peninsula, and was documented by J. Cuppage in the 1986 archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula. Conjoined huts of this type are generally thought to belong to early medieval or pre-medieval habitation, small circular or sub-circular stone structures built against or attached to one another, sometimes sharing a wall. An enclosure, in this context, would have defined a bounded space around them, perhaps for sheltering animals or marking a domestic or agricultural boundary. Beyond those general terms, the remains at Baile An Lochaigh are too fragmentary to say much more with confidence.