Hut site, Na Gleannta Thuaidh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
Tucked into a valley on the southern slopes between the western spurs of Brandon Peak and Ballysitteragh mountain, a circular enclosure on the Dingle Peninsula holds an unusual combination of the living and the dead.
What appears at first glance to be a simple prehistoric or early medieval enclosure turns out to have served, well into the nineteenth century, as a calluragh, an unconsecrated burial ground traditionally used for unbaptised infants and others excluded from the rites of the institutional church. Inside the enclosure, the foundations of three huts share the space with graves; the remainder of the interior is, according to survey records, completely taken up with burials.
The hut foundations are modest but readable on the ground. One oval example, located in the south-eastern part of the enclosure, has an interior measuring roughly six metres by two and three-quarter metres, with walls a metre wide and surviving to about three-quarters of a metre in height. Entrance gaps are visible in both the north and south walls, and there are traces of an internal dividing wall, suggesting the structure was subdivided, possibly for different uses or occupants. The relationship between the huts and the burial ground is not fully resolved. It is unclear whether the enclosure was originally a domestic or agricultural space that was later repurposed for burial, or whether both functions overlapped across a longer period. The site sits in Na Gleannta Thuaidh, the northern glens, a landscape of the Corca Dhuibhne region documented extensively by J. Cuppage in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, which remains a foundational reference for the area's field monuments.