Hut site, Maghanlawaun, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, a small stone enclosure sits at the centre of a wider archaeological complex, easy to overlook and difficult to date with certainty, yet precise enough in its construction to suggest it was built by people who knew exactly what they were doing.
The structure is subcircular, meaning roughly oval rather than a true circle, and its interior measures just 4.2 metres by 2.7 metres, barely large enough to shelter a small family or a few animals from the Atlantic weather that sweeps across this part of south Kerry.
What distinguishes the enclosure is the quality of its drystone walling, built in well-laid horizontal courses rather than the rougher, more improvised stonework that characterises many early rural structures. Drystone construction uses no mortar; the stability of the wall depends entirely on the careful selection and placement of each stone. The care evident here points to a degree of skill and intention that raises questions about who built it and when, questions the surviving physical evidence alone cannot fully answer. The site was documented by archaeologists A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan in their survey of the Iveragh Peninsula, published by Cork University Press in 1996, which remains one of the most thorough records of the region's early settlement landscape.