Hut site, Na Gleannta Thuaidh, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a stretch of the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry, what looks at first glance like a natural scatter of stones resolves, on closer inspection, into the ghost of human habitation.
Two circular structures, built in the drystone method, meaning without mortar, using carefully stacked unmortared stone, once stood here in Na Gleannta Thuaidh. One survives as a very ruined circular outline; the other has collapsed entirely into a mound of rubble lying directly to its south, its form now more suggested than defined.
The site was recorded as part of J. Cuppage's 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, a substantial fieldwork project covering the Dingle Peninsula that catalogued the remarkable density of early remains in this part of Kerry. Circular drystone hut sites of this kind are found across the peninsula and represent some of the earliest forms of domestic or agricultural shelter in the Irish landscape, though assigning a precise date to any individual example is rarely straightforward without excavation. The proximity of the two structures here, roughly a hundred metres to the north-east of a related site, hints at a small cluster of activity rather than an isolated building.