Rock art, Coomasaharn, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Rock art, Coomasaharn, Co. Kerry

At 218 metres above sea level, on a steep south-south-east-facing slope above Coomasaharn Lake in south Kerry, a low sandstone outcrop carries marks that are easy to miss entirely.

Gorse bushes crowd it on two sides, lichen covers the decorated surface, and the motifs themselves are faint enough that the eye can slide straight over them. This is prehistoric rock art in its least theatrical form: small, quiet, and utterly resistant to drama.

The rock is an irregular sandstone outcrop, roughly 1.85 metres north to south and 1.10 metres east to west, with a relatively level upper surface. Two separate descriptions of the carvings exist, and they differ slightly in what they record, suggesting the surface rewards careful and repeated examination. One account, drawing on work by O'Kelly (1958) and Finlay (1973), describes two cupmarks, small deliberately carved depressions, each enclosed within its own frame, one oval and one circular, the circle partly broken by weathering. A radial groove connects one cupmark to its oval frame, and a short groove then links that frame to a larger outer enclosure. The second description records a double cupmark, each depression around seven centimetres in diameter and only four to five millimetres deep, enclosed within a faint oval ring. Rock art of this kind is generally assigned to the Bronze Age, though its precise meaning and purpose remain genuinely open questions. The Iveragh Peninsula has a notable concentration of such carved stones, and Coomasaharn sits within that broader pattern of upland marking.

The site sits in rough upland pasture, north of a small field's fenceline, with open views southward over Coomasaharn Lake. The decorated surface measures only about 30 centimetres across, is covered in lichen, and is described as inconspicuous. Anyone approaching should expect to search carefully rather than simply arrive and look down.

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