Ringfort (Rath), Lios Na Mbóbhán, Co. Kerry

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Ringfort (Rath), Lios Na Mbóbhán, Co. Kerry

The enclosure at Lios Na Mbóbhán presents one of those quietly complicated sites where the closer you look, the less certain things become.

Set on a gentle west-facing slope above the Owenmore valley, it is a rath, an earthen ringfort of the kind built across Ireland from the early medieval period onwards as a defended farmstead enclosure. This one is roughly sub-circular, measuring about 22 metres across at its widest, and its two halves tell noticeably different stories. The eastern side is bounded by an earthen bank with intermittent traces of drystone revetment, that is, facing stones used to stabilise the bank's outer edge. The western side, however, is enclosed by a freestanding drystone wall that may be a later reconstruction or replacement. The uncertainty is never quite resolved, partly because a thick growth of briars and thorn trees makes close examination difficult, and partly because the archaeology itself is genuinely ambiguous.

Inside the enclosure, two circular stone huts survive in varying states of collapse, both built directly against the enclosing walls in a way that complicates the question of what is original and what is later addition. The first, on the eastern side, has an internal diameter of around 3.95 metres; its wall still stands to 1.2 metres where it meets the bank but has slumped to a grass-covered mound on the opposite side. Its upper courses appear slightly corbelled, meaning the stones were laid with a gradual inward overhang, a technique associated with dry-stone roofing. The second hut, on the western side, is slightly smaller at 3.5 metres in diameter, and here the wall reaches 1.7 metres at its highest. At this point the outer face of the enclosure wall bulges outward, possibly because it incorporates an earlier structural element, though collapse and rubble obscure any firm conclusion. A recess cut into the hut wall extends back beneath this bulge, adding another layer of uncertainty to what was originally a straightforward domestic compound. J. Cuppage documented the site in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, and the record of accumulated ambiguity he left behind is, in its own way, as interesting as the walls themselves.

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