Souterrain, Caher, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
Most archaeological sites announce themselves in some way, a wall line, a raised mound, a scatter of stone.
This one in Caher, County Kerry, offers nothing visible at all. What is suspected to lie beneath a patch of poorly drained pasture, settled in a slight hollow in the ground, is a souterrain, an underground stone-lined passage or chamber typically built in early medieval Ireland for storage or refuge. The site exists largely as a rumour confirmed by a spade.
The only real evidence came to light during drainage works, when the landowner uncovered a flagged floor of well-selected small stones roughly one metre below ground level. The careful choice of material suggests deliberate construction rather than a natural deposit, lending weight to the identification as a souterrain, though the classification remains tentative. What was exposed during those works has since been reburied or disturbed enough that no surface trace remains. Approximately one hundred metres to the south-east lies another site of interest, a possible fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking place typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of burnt and fire-cracked stone beside a trough. The proximity of the two features, if both are genuine, hints at a landscape that saw repeated use across different periods, though drawing firm conclusions from two unexcavated and only partially identified sites would be overreaching.
