Rock art, Liss, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Rock art, Liss, Co. Kerry

On a south-west-facing slope of mountain heath in County Kerry, at about 168 metres above sea level, a large sandstone outcrop carries a carving so modest it could easily be mistaken for a natural crack in the rock.

The decorated surface measures just 25 centimetres by 15 centimetres on a stone that is otherwise more than four metres wide, and the single motif it bears, a semi-circular groove no deeper than one or two millimetres, is partially obscured by black mosses that have crept across it over centuries, or more likely millennia. Rock art of this kind, abstract markings pecked or incised into exposed stone, is found widely across Atlantic Europe and is generally attributed to the Neolithic or Bronze Age periods, though the people who made such marks and the reasons they chose particular stones remain genuinely unknown.

What gives this particular stone a quiet authority is its position. The outcrop looks south towards the Kenmare River estuary and west across the Staigue river valley, a placement that seems deliberate rather than incidental. Whether the view was the point, or whether the stone simply happened to stand in a well-travelled upland corridor, is impossible to say. Two further examples of rock art survive close by, one roughly 40 metres to the south-east and another about the same distance to the north-east, which suggests this patch of hillside carried some significance in its landscape. The semi-circular motif itself, visible as it traces from north around through east to south, is a spare and unhurried mark, just 24 centimetres across, made by someone who pressed into stone with considerable patience and a very fine tool.

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