Hut site, Rannagh, Co. Clare
Co. Clare |
Settlement Sites
On the Carran plateau in the Burren, a roughly circular outline in the ground marks what was once a roofed structure of some kind, sitting at the centre of a larger enclosure as if occupying a position of deliberate importance.
The hut site measures approximately thirteen metres in diameter, which places it at the more substantial end of such features; a typical early medieval hut might be half that size, suggesting this was no casual shelter.
The site sits immediately west of Carran village, a small settlement in an area of County Clare that has long drawn archaeologists on account of its unusually dense concentration of prehistoric and early medieval remains. The plateau itself is classic Burren limestone country, where thin soils and exposed karst have preserved earthworks that elsewhere would have been ploughed away or built over long ago. The hut is recorded as lying centrally within its enclosure, a spatial arrangement that recurs at other sites across Ireland and tends to indicate a settlement of some organisation, where the relationship between the inner structure and its surrounding boundary was considered and intentional rather than incidental. Research published by Jones and colleagues in 2011 placed it within what they identified as Enclosure 5 in their survey of the broader Rannagh area, situating it within a wider pattern of enclosed settlement across this part of the Burren.