Rock art, Kealduff, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Rock art, Kealduff, Co. Kerry

At 222 metres above sea level on a north-east-facing slope above the Behy River valley in County Kerry, a small sandstone outcrop carries a set of carvings so faint and so weathered that the rough surface of the stone itself conspires to hide them.

The decorated area is roughly the size of a sheet of A3 paper, trapezoidal in shape, and the marks cut into it are shallow enough, some only a few millimetres deep, that reading them requires patience and decent light. What survives is not immediately legible, which is part of what makes it quietly compelling.

The motifs include two linear grooves arranged in a T-shape, one running north to south at around 22 centimetres long, the other perpendicular to it at 26 centimetres. A shorter groove sits about 18 centimetres to the north. Surveyors have noted the possibility that these grooves are the remnants of a weathered cross, though the uncertainty is genuine rather than diplomatic hedging. Alongside the T-shaped arrangement sits a cupmark, a shallow circular depression about 5 centimetres across, a type of carving found throughout prehistoric Atlantic Europe and among the oldest forms of human mark-making on stone. From its western edge extends a gently curving radial groove, and nearby a small patch of pickmarks, the individual hammer-and-point strikes used to work stone surfaces, covers an area of roughly 6 by 7 centimetres. Whether the cross-like grooves and the cupmark belong to the same episode of carving, or represent different hands working in different centuries, is not established. The stone itself is embedded in peat on its southern side and sits only about 28 centimetres above ground on the north, surrounded by a circle of well-grazed grass about 30 metres across, itself enclosed by blanket bog. Roughly 45 metres to the north-east, a possible pre-bog field wall runs east to west, a feature that, if genuine, would suggest the landscape here was once managed and settled long before the bog crept in and covered it.

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