Ring-ditch, Levitstown, Co. Kildare
Co. Kildare |
Ritual/Ceremonial
Near Levitstown in County Kildare, a perfect circle lies buried beneath farmland, invisible at ground level but unmistakable from the air. It shows up as a cropmark, the kind of trace that appears when buried ditches or banks cause crops above them to grow at slightly different rates, producing telltale variations in colour and height that only become legible from altitude. In this case, the circle belongs to one of two related features identified on a single aerial photograph, each one a ghost of something far older pressed into the soil.
The feature is interpreted as a ring-barrow or ring-ditch, terms that describe a class of prehistoric funerary or ritual monument defined by a circular fosse, which is simply a ditch, sometimes accompanied by an internal or external bank. These monuments are found across Ireland and Britain and are generally associated with the Bronze Age, though their precise function and dating vary considerably from site to site. The Levitstown example is modest in scale, with an estimated maximum diameter of around twenty metres, placing it at the smaller end of the type. Nothing in the ground has been excavated or confirmed; the identification rests entirely on the shape and character of the cropmark as recorded in the aerial photograph catalogued as CUCAP BGN 49.
