Hut site, Dunkerron, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
In the townland of Dunkerron, in the south-west corner of County Kerry, the remains of a hut site survive, a small and easily overlooked trace of early human occupation in a landscape already crowded with antiquity.
Hut sites of this kind, typically the footprint of a simple circular or sub-rectangular dwelling formed from stone, earth, or both, are among the most common yet least visited of Irish archaeological monuments. They are the everyday residue of farming life, the places where people actually slept and cooked and sheltered, as opposed to the ceremonial or defensive structures that tend to attract more attention.
Dunkerron sits within a stretch of Kerry that was densely settled in the early medieval period and beyond, and hut sites in this region can range considerably in date and character. Without more detailed recorded description it is difficult to say precisely what form this particular example takes, whether a simple platform scraped into a hillside, a low stony ring worn almost flush with the ground, or something more clearly defined. What can be said is that it belongs to a category of site catalogued by archaeologists Muiris O'Sullivan and Larry Sheehan in their 1996 inventory of south-west Kerry, a systematic effort to document the full range of archaeological remains across one of Ireland's most archaeologically complex regions.