Souterrain, Baile An Tsléibhe, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the lower eastern slopes of Mount Eagle, on a stretch of good, level ground in Baile An Tsléibhe, there is nothing left to see.
That, in its way, is the interesting part. A large souterrain once lay here, partly collapsed, its underground passages and chambers of the kind early medieval Irish communities built beneath or beside their settlements, likely for storage, refuge, or both. No surface trace of it survives today.
What makes the site linger in the mind is the object that came out of it before it disappeared from view entirely. A long stone axe or pick was found inside the souterrain and was subsequently presented to the Department of Archaeology at University College Cork. Stone axes of this type belong to an entirely different era from the souterrains that typically date to the early medieval period, roughly the sixth to tenth centuries. Whether the axe had been deliberately placed there, had found its way in through collapse and soil movement, or had simply been lying in the ground long before anyone dug the souterrain, is not recorded. The site sits within the Corca Dhuibhne region of the Dingle Peninsula, an area extraordinarily dense with prehistoric and early Christian remains, and was catalogued as part of J. Cuppage's archaeological survey of the peninsula published in 1986.
There is nothing to find on the ground now, and no particular reason to seek the spot out as a visitor. The significance is in the stray fact of that stone tool, pulled from the dark of a collapsed underground passage and carried off to a university shelf, quietly suggesting that the ground here had been meaningful to people across an improbably long stretch of time.