Hut site, Com Dhíneol Theas, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Com Dhíneol Theas, Co. Kerry

On a west-facing slope above Coumeenoole Bay on the Dingle Peninsula, a cluster of five small stone structures sits on a patch of relatively level ground, easy to overlook and easier still to misread.

The largest of them is roughly circular, measuring between 3.3 and 4 metres across internally, though much of its wall has been reduced to a single course of stone. The others are smaller, and some retain their roofing, repurposed over time into sheep-shelters. That layering, an older circular structure of unclear origin sitting among later animal enclosures, is what makes the grouping quietly interesting rather than simply ruinous.

The site is known locally as Loc an Chinn, and it was recorded as part of the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey of the Dingle Peninsula, published in 1986 under the direction of J. Cuppage. That survey, produced in collaboration with Oidhreacht Chorca Dhuibhne, was one of the more thorough regional inventories of its kind carried out in Ireland during the twentieth century, documenting everything from promontory forts and ogham stones to modest field monuments of the sort that rarely attract wider attention. The hut site at Com Dhíneol Theas falls into that last category. Its single-coursed walling makes precise dating difficult; circular stone structures of this form appear across a wide span of Irish prehistory and early medieval settlement, and without excavation it is hard to say much more than that something was built here, used, and eventually reduced to its foundations while the landscape around it continued to function as farmland.

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