Rock art, Letter, Co. Kerry

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Rock art, Letter, Co. Kerry

On a low sandstone outcrop in the mountain heath above the Behy River valley in County Kerry, someone, several thousand years ago, spent considerable time hammering small circular hollows into rock.

The stone itself is not dramatic; it measures roughly four metres by two, rises barely thirty centimetres at its highest point, and sits close to the ground at 164 metres above sea level on a north-east-facing slope. What makes it worth attention is the quiet deliberateness of what was carved into it.

The decorated surface runs for about three metres along the spine and north-north-east-facing side of the stone, and it carries several distinct motifs. Four cupmarks, the simplest form of prehistoric rock art, small circular depressions ground or pecked into the surface, run along the narrow spine across the western half. To their east sits a cup-and-ring motif, a single cupmark encircled by a carved ring, roughly twelve centimetres across. Further east still, toward the end of the stone, a more complex two-cup-and-ring motif appears: two cupmarks, one distinct and one subtler, enclosed together within an oval ring. The motifs are faint and weathered, as one might expect of carvings exposed to Kerry hillside weather for a very long time, but the forms are legible to a patient eye. Two further carved stones lie within two metres of this one to the north-north-east and north-east, suggesting that this small stretch of hillside was, at some point in prehistory, a place where the act of marking stone mattered repeatedly and in close proximity.

The stone sits roughly six and a half metres from a stream, with open views down over the Behy River valley to the north-east. The approach is across open mountain heath, and the low profile of the outcrop means it is easy to walk past without noticing the carvings, particularly in flat or overcast light. Raking light, early or late in the day, tends to throw shallow carved surfaces into sharper relief, and that is likely the most useful condition for picking out motifs this faint.

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