Stone row, Comalán, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Stone Monuments
One of the standing stones in this small prehistoric row on Clear Island has a hole bored clean through it, which is not something you encounter every day.
Stone rows, alignments of two or more upright megaliths arranged in a line, are relatively common across the Cork and Kerry landscape, but a perforated stone within one is a rarer feature, the purpose of which remains a matter of quiet debate among archaeologists. This particular row sits on a level patch of ground just below a rocky knoll at the northeastern end of Clear Island, a small and still relatively isolated island off the tip of the Mizen Peninsula.
The arrangement consists of two standing stones aligned on a north-south axis, set 0.85 metres apart, and a third slab lying prostrate to the south, partly buried under field debris. The northern stone stands 2.3 metres tall and measures 1.2 metres in length and 0.4 metres in thickness; it is the one that carries the perforation. The southern upright is slightly taller at 2.65 metres, though narrower at 0.3 metres thick. The fallen slab to the south is the largest of the three, reaching 3.4 metres at its maximum dimension. Whether it was ever upright, and whether it represents a third element of the original alignment or something else entirely, is not clear. The site is documented by O Nualláin and Roberts in their respective 1988 studies of Cork's prehistoric stone rows, placing it within a broader regional tradition that is generally understood to date to the Bronze Age, though precise dating of individual alignments remains difficult.