Hut site, Feaghmaan, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, a cluster of ancient hut sites sits in the landscape of Feaghmaan, representing the kind of early settlement that is easily walked past without a second glance.
What distinguishes this particular grouping is its layout: the huts do not all occupy the same enclosure. At least one sat within a defined site boundary, while another was positioned outside it, a spatial arrangement that raises quiet questions about how the place was used and by whom.
The detail comes from work carried out by Mitchell in 1989, which recorded two further huts associated with the site, one in the interior and one beyond its southwestern edge. Hut sites of this kind are the remains of simple, often circular stone structures used for shelter or habitation, typically dating to the early medieval period in Ireland, though some examples are older. The Iveragh Peninsula is unusually rich in such survivals, partly because of its relatively low level of later development, and the broader archaeological survey of South Kerry has catalogued hundreds of monuments across the region.