Rock art, Letter, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a hillside in Letter, Co. Kerry, at 163 metres above sea level, a low sandstone boulder carries a pattern that has survived for thousands of years in the mountain heath.
The decorated surface is modest, barely 33 by 30 centimetres, and faces south. What marks it out is the precision of the carving despite that small canvas, and the fact that it sits quietly on a northeast-facing slope with wide views down towards the Behy River valley, seemingly unremarked upon by most of the landscape around it.
The main motif belongs to a tradition known as prehistoric rock art, a broad category covering abstract carvings, typically cups and rings, found across Atlantic Europe and dating broadly to the Neolithic and Bronze Age periods. Here, a central cupmark, around 4 centimetres across and 6 millimetres deep, is enclosed by partial inner and outer rings to its east and west. These rings do not complete full circles; instead, their ends join at the north and south to produce two kidney shapes flanking the central cup. The area between the northern ends of these kidney shapes has been filled with additional pickmarks, small deliberate indentations made by striking the stone, while the southern area is left open. A looser cluster of pickmarks sits nearby towards the south of the decorated surface. Another rock art site lies roughly 11.5 metres to the south, suggesting this area of upland heath was a focus of some significance for the people who worked these stones. The boulder itself is irregular in plan, smooth and fractured sandstone measuring just over a metre north to south, and the carvings remain well preserved.