Stone row, Gortnagulla, Co. Kerry

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Stone Monuments

Stone row, Gortnagulla, Co. Kerry

On the lower slopes of a ridge running south-west from Mullaghnarakill mountain in County Kerry, three stones mark a line across rocky ground that has puzzled and intrigued archaeologists for generations.

Two still stand upright; the third has fallen and now lies flat, its considerable length, over three metres, giving some sense of the effort involved in raising it in the first place. Alongside the row sits an enclosure, the two elements together suggesting that whoever placed these stones here had something more structured in mind than a boundary marker or a field division.

Stone rows are a recurring feature of the prehistoric landscape across Kerry and the wider south-west of Ireland, though their original purpose remains genuinely uncertain. Ritual, astronomical alignment, and territorial marking have all been proposed, and none entirely ruled out. This particular row runs on a north-east to south-west axis and stretches 4.3 metres in total. The tallest stone, at the north-east end, stands 1.95 metres high, narrow and blade-like at its base, and leans slightly to the south-east as though settling into the hillside over millennia. The second stone is a little shorter at 1.8 metres and stands just under two-thirds of a metre further along the line. The prostrate stone, rectangular in outline and averaging 0.8 metres wide, would have been a substantial presence when upright. Seán Ó Nualláin, whose 1988 survey catalogued stone rows across the region, recorded the site's measurements in the detail that still defines what we know about it.

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