Standing stone, Rusheen, Co. Cork

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Stone Monuments

Standing stone, Rusheen, Co. Cork

A standing stone that no longer stands, and may no longer exist at all, occupies a quietly puzzling corner of the archaeological record for County Cork.

The stone at Rusheen, near the east bank of the Clashavoon Stream, was already lying flat by the time it was formally measured, 2.1 metres long and only 5 centimetres thick, a thin slab of the kind that would have made an imposing upright when planted in the ground.

What makes the site particularly elusive is its near-total absence from the cartographic record. Neither the 1842 nor the 1904 Ordnance Survey six-inch maps show any trace of it, which suggests it had already fallen, or was simply overlooked, long before the twentieth century began. The stone was noted by Hartnett in 1939, who recorded that it had once stood sixty inches, or roughly 1.5 metres, in height. Standing stones of this type are among the most common prehistoric monuments in Ireland, typically dating to the Bronze Age, though their precise function remains debated; they have been associated with burials, territorial markers, and ritual landscapes. By 2002, however, a field investigation found no trace of the stone whatsoever, a detail recorded in the published excavation reports for that year. Whether it was removed, buried, broken up, or simply lost in the pasture is not known.

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