Standing stone, Killiney, Co. Kerry

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Killiney, Co. Kerry

At the base of the Magharees Peninsula in County Kerry, a standing stone now lies flat against a field wall, toppled from the upright position it had held for millennia.

The stone is substantial, two metres long and up to eighty centimetres wide, the sort of prehistoric marker that would have been visible across the low, level ground surrounding it. Sometime in the years before 2013, according to local information, it was knocked over, and it has remained prostrate ever since, resting just south of the spot where it once stood.

Standing stones are among the most enigmatic survivals of prehistoric Ireland. Erected singly or in loose groupings, they are difficult to date with precision and their original purposes remain debated, ranging from territorial markers and assembly points to ritual or funerary functions. This particular example sits roughly half a mile south of Lough Gill, in a landscape where such monuments are not uncommon. The Dingle Peninsula as a whole holds an exceptional concentration of early remains, and this stone was recorded by J. Cuppage in the 1986 archaeological survey of the Corca Dhuibhne region, a thorough cataloguing of the peninsula's prehistoric and early historic monuments. What the survey could not anticipate was that the stone, which had endured in place through the intervening centuries, would be displaced so quietly and so recently.

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