Rock art, Baile Uí Uaithnín, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a west-facing slope of mountain heath in County Kerry, at roughly 97 metres above sea level, a sandstone boulder sits embedded in the hillside with an overhang that pushes outward from the slope.
The rock measures just over a metre east to west and little more than half a metre north to south. Its western surface is flaky and weathered, but tucked onto a south-south-east-facing section of the stone, in a decorated area no larger than a spread hand, are two prehistoric carvings that have survived long enough to be almost invisible.
The motifs are cup-and-ring carvings, a form of prehistoric rock art found across Atlantic Europe and Ireland, consisting of a shallow circular depression, the cup, surrounded by one or more incised concentric rings. Here, the two motifs are conjoined, sharing their space on a surface measuring roughly 25 by 15 centimetres. The western motif is the clearer of the pair, with an overall diameter of 12 centimetres, a ring width of between 2.5 and 3 centimetres, and a cup just 3.5 centimetres across, all carved to a depth of only 2 to 3 millimetres. The eastern motif is slightly larger in one dimension but has a cupmark so faint it is barely legible. Neither carving would be easy to spot without knowing exactly where to look. The site was first formally identified by Mícheál Ó Coileáin, Heritage Officer with Kerry County Council, in an unpublished MA thesis completed in 2006, which means it spent an unknown stretch of time unrecorded, overlooking Lough Adoon to the east and the Brandon Mountain range to the north-west, noticed by very few people and formally known to none.