Rock art, Annagap, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Rock art, Annagap, Co. Kerry

On a rough east-facing slope above the Owenascaul River in County Kerry, there is a site that appears on the archaeological record under the category of rock art, yet there is no rock art left to see.

The carved stone and the grave that were once noted here have both vanished from view, leaving behind only an oval depression in the ground, roughly 5.5 metres by 3.5 metres, enclosed by a low stony bank about half a metre high and open at the north-west. What that depression actually represents is, in the words of those who have examined it, simply not clear.

J. Cuppage, writing in the 1986 Dingle Peninsula archaeological survey, recorded that both the cupped stone, a type of prehistoric rock art consisting of shallow circular hollows pecked into stone surface, and a feature described locally as a grave had already disappeared by that point, though local knowledge of the grave's position was still being passed on. A more recent survey recorded a slightly smaller depression near the north-west corner of the same field, defined by an earth and stone bank on three sides, open to the north. Whether this is the same feature measured differently, or a distinct one, is not resolved. The field has been improved for pasture to some degree, though rock outcrops remain visible across it, and the wider landscape is still legible in the way it might once have been, with Beenoskee and Stradbally mountain to the north and the gap where the Owenascaul River meets the sea visible to the south.

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Pete F
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