Ringfort (Rath), Ower, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Ringforts
At some point during tillage work on the ground just north of this early medieval enclosure, a large quantity of bones came out of the soil.
No excavation followed, no formal record was made of what kind of bones they were or how they were arranged, and the detail survives only as local information, passed along rather than documented. That ambiguity is part of what makes the site quietly unsettling.
The earthwork itself sits on a ridge in open grassland in Ower, County Galway, and takes the form of a subcircular rath, one of the most common monument types in the Irish landscape. A rath is a ringfort of earthen or stone construction, typically dating from the early medieval period and understood to have functioned as a defended farmstead enclosure. This one measures roughly 36 metres north to south and 30.5 metres east to west, and is defined by two banks with a fosse, a ditch, running between them. The inner bank retains traces of external stone-facing along its eastern and south-eastern arc, giving it a more substantial character than the rest of the circuit, where the enclosure drops to a simple scarp. A later field wall has been built directly over the outer bank, following its line so closely that the two are now effectively merged. The entrance, as was common in Irish ringforts, faces south-east.
The bones found to the north remain unexplained. Whether animal or human, scattered or grouped, recent or ancient, none of that is known. What is clear is that the area immediately outside a rath's perimeter was sometimes used for burials or refuse, and occasionally for both, so the discovery is not without parallel elsewhere in Ireland, even if its meaning here remains open.