Rock art, Letter, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Rock art, Letter, Co. Kerry

On a northeast-facing slope of mountain heath in Letter, County Kerry, a low sandstone rock carries markings that are several thousand years old and easy to walk past without a second glance.

The rock itself is modest, subtriangular in plan and rising no more than 45 centimetres at its highest point, but its surface holds two cup-and-ring motifs, a form of prehistoric rock art found across Atlantic Europe and consisting of a circular depression, the cup, surrounded by one or more carved rings. Nobody knows with certainty what these carvings meant to the people who made them, though they are generally associated with the Bronze Age and appear frequently in upland and marginal landscapes.

The decorated surface faces northwest and measures roughly 70 by 60 centimetres. At its southwestern edge sits the better-preserved of the two motifs, a complete cup-and-ring with a cupmark four centimetres across and a carved ring between one and one and a half centimetres wide. The second motif, positioned at the eastern edge of the rock face, is in considerably worse condition. Approximately 12 centimetres in diameter, it retains only the remains of a picked ring around a small central cupmark, and the stone itself is flaking away in layers along the northeast edge, most likely the result of repeated freeze-thaw action over centuries. A second rock art site lies just 60 centimetres to the southwest, suggesting this particular patch of heath was, for whatever reason, a place people returned to and marked. The site sits at 164 metres above sea level, with open views down into the Behy River valley to the northeast, and a small stream runs a few metres to the southeast.

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Pete F
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