Mound, Ballyfaris, Co. Sligo

Co. Sligo |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Mound, Ballyfaris, Co. Sligo

Tucked into the northern half of a larger enclosure at Ballyfaris in County Sligo, a roughly circular mound sits quietly in the landscape, its dimensions recorded with the kind of precision that makes it easy to underestimate what you are actually looking at.

The feature is a hut site, the earthwork trace of a dwelling, enclosed by a low bank that measures just 35 centimetres above the interior ground level at its most modest points and rises to about half a metre on the exterior southern side. That asymmetry, subtle as it is, hints at the practical decisions made by whoever shaped this ground.

The hut site has an internal diameter of 7.5 metres, which would have made for a reasonably substantial single-roomed structure. The enclosing bank varies in width from 1.8 metres on the northern arc to 2.6 metres on the southern side. In Irish archaeology, a hut site of this kind typically refers to the earthen or stony remains of a simple circular building, the bank being all that survives of what was once a wall foundation or a raised platform defining the living space. It sits within a larger enclosure, a separately recorded feature, suggesting that the hut was not a solitary element but part of a more organised arrangement of space, perhaps a farmstead or a small settlement cluster whose full extent has not been fully characterised in the available record.

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Pete F
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