Hut site, Na Gleannta Thuaidh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Na Gleannta Thuaidh, Co. Kerry

Two small stone circles sit in the uplands of Na Gleannta Thuaidh, in the north of the Dingle Peninsula, joined together like a figure of eight pressed low against the hillside.

What makes them worth a second look is not their size but their ambiguity: these are conjoined circular structures, each roughly four metres in diameter, that have been so extensively modified over the centuries that their original purpose is no longer straightforward to read.

Survey work carried out for the Corca Dhuibhne archaeological survey, published by J. Cuppage in 1986, recorded the two structures with walls standing to about 1.3 metres in height and roughly 1.4 metres thick, dimensions consistent with the dry-stone clochán-style hut buildings found across the Dingle Peninsula, where early medieval and later inhabitants constructed small circular or beehive-shaped shelters from the local stone. Adjoining the northern of the two structures is a crudely-built sheep-pen, a telling detail that illustrates how such ancient sites were routinely pressed back into practical use by later farming communities, their walls cannibalised or extended without much concern for archaeological preservation. It is this layering of use, early habitation followed by pastoral adaptation, that has left the structures in their current, considerably altered state.

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