Hut site, Teeromoyle, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Hut site, Teeromoyle, Co. Kerry

On the northern flank of the upper Ferta river valley, caught between the slopes of Teermoyle and Coomacarrea mountains, the remains of a large complex of huts occupy some of the rougher ground on the Iveragh Peninsula.

What survives is modest in appearance, two possible huts reduced to semicircular arcs of sod-covered stone walling, with external diameters of 3.2 metres and 2.3 metres respectively. Set against scree-strewn grazing land, they look west toward Valencia Harbour, occupying a narrow V-shaped valley where the landscape narrows and the sense of enclosure is considerable.

The site is part of a broader scatter of hut remains along the north side of the upper Ferta river, suggesting that this was once a more populated or at least more regularly used stretch of upland. Hut sites of this kind on the Iveragh Peninsula are difficult to date with precision without excavation, but similar stone structures across Kerry and the wider west of Ireland are often associated with seasonal pastoral activity, particularly the practice of transhumance, where communities moved livestock to higher ground in summer months. The two surviving examples here are catalogued as part of the archaeological record of south Kerry compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996, which drew together evidence of settlement, agriculture, and land use across one of Ireland's more archaeologically layered landscapes.

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