Rock art, Caherlehillan, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Rock art, Caherlehillan, Co. Kerry

On a south-westerly spur of Mullaghnarakill mountain in County Kerry, a flat-topped boulder carries a name that suggests people have been paying it attention for a very long time.

In Irish it is known as an leac sgríbhneoiread, roughly the "stone of the writing", and the surface of the rock bears a dense arrangement of prehistoric carvings: cup-marks (shallow, roughly circular depressions pecked into the stone), cup-and-ring motifs in which one or more concentric rings surround a central cup, curving grooves, and a cruciform figure whose arms each terminate in a small circle. What makes the stone quietly strange is the layering of use across time. The prehistoric carvings sit alongside what appears to be a more recent, and far more damaging, tradition: bonfires were lit on the stone, and the heat has caused significant scaling of the decorated surface, particularly on the south-west side.

The site sits at around 166 metres above sea level on a south-west-facing slope, with long views out over the River Ferta valley and the sea beyond. The boulder itself measures roughly 2.9 metres east to west and 1.45 metres north to south, with a maximum height of about 64 centimetres, making it a low, wide table of rock rather than an upright standing stone. Its motifs were examined and described by the archaeologist R. A. S. Macalister in 1939, though his interpretations have since been revised. What he called a "spiral" is now understood to be a cup-and-two-ring motif with a radial groove extending outward from the outer ring, partially obscured by a natural fissure in the rock. His "labyrinth pattern" is, more precisely, a cup surrounded by three angular rings, with two grooves interrupting the outer rings. That squared, angular quality sets it apart from the more commonly rounded ring motifs found elsewhere. By 2017, when the boulder was re-examined in detail, thick green lichen had spread across much of the surface, making many of the fainter motifs difficult to read.

The stone lies within an area of dense rock outcrop on mountain heath, and the motifs are considerably weathered. Raking light, when the sun is low on the horizon, is generally the best condition for picking out shallow prehistoric carvings like these; arriving in the early morning or late afternoon on a clear day will give the decorated surface the best chance of revealing itself.

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