Rock art, Letter, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a stretch of upland heath in Co. Kerry, at around 168 metres above sea level, a low sandstone outcrop sits on a gentle north-easterly slope above the Behy River valley.
It is barely fifteen centimetres at its highest point, easily mistaken for any other flat-faced rock breaking through the heath. But its surface carries marks that were deliberately made, most likely in prehistory, by someone who chose this particular stone and worked it with considerable care.
The decorated face is roughly rectangular, measuring about seventy centimetres by forty centimetres. Across it, a surveyor's eye can pick out several distinct elements: a line of pickmarks running nearly seventy centimetres from north-east to south-west, two cupmarks, a short linear groove, and a small cluster of additional pickmarks to the south-east. Cupmarks, which are shallow, roughly circular depressions pecked into rock surfaces, are among the most widespread and least understood motifs in prehistoric rock art across Ireland and Britain. Here, one cupmark sits just above the main pickmark line, another sits roughly eighteen centimetres below it, and a small groove lies close to the upper one. The exact meaning of such arrangements remains genuinely unknown. What is clear is that the elements were placed in deliberate relation to one another on a surface that faces out towards the valley and is overlooked, in a broad arc from south-east to north-east, by the surrounding mountains. The centuries have not been especially kind to the carving. Repeated freeze-thaw action, where water penetrates fine cracks and expands as ice, has flaked away part of the north-eastern end of the main pickmark line, and the lower cupmark is rough enough that its original depth may be greater than what remains visible today.