Rock art, An Choill Mhór, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Rock art, An Choill Mhór, Co. Kerry

In the rough pasture above the Scorid River valley in County Kerry, a piece of prehistoric rock art sits at roughly 92 metres above sea level, on a steep east-facing slope with expansive views across Brandon Bay to the Maharee Islands and the Brandon Mountain range.

The problem is that nobody has been able to find it since it was first identified. That status, formally recorded as "not located", puts it in a quietly unsettling category of heritage, things that are known to exist, documented and catalogued, yet physically absent from any confirmed coordinates.

The site was first identified as rock art by Micheal Ó Coileáin, Heritage Officer with Kerry County Council, in an unpublished MA thesis completed in 2006. Rock art of the kind found across the uplands of Kerry and west Cork typically consists of carved motifs on exposed stone surfaces, most often cup marks, concentric circles, or radial lines, and dates broadly to the later Neolithic and Bronze Age periods. The landscape here fits the pattern; many such carvings were placed on prominent slopes with wide views, and the slope above the Scorid valley, overlooked to the south-west by Slievanea mountain, matches that profile closely. But without a confirmed location, the carving remains more archival than physical, known through a single academic reference rather than any subsequent fieldwork or independent verification.

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Pete F
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