Earthwork, Killuney, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Earthwork, Killuney, Co. Galway

A modern road has bisected this ancient earthwork so cleanly that the southern half of it has effectively vanished from view.

What survives sits on the crest of a small but prominent hillock in the rolling grassland of north County Galway, and even that remnant requires some patience to read. The circular form, roughly fifteen metres in diameter, is poorly preserved; yet the hillock itself still holds enough of its original geometry to suggest that whoever shaped this place was thinking carefully about elevation and visibility.

To the north of the road, the site becomes a little more legible. A fosse, the term for a defensive or boundary ditch typically dug to reinforce an earthen bank, curves around the base of the hillock from the north-west through north and on to the north-east, and an outer bank follows a similar arc. A separate bank branches off from this outer bank near the north-east, running on a roughly east-west alignment with a slight curve. The earthwork is also associated with a cashel-related feature recorded in the same area, suggesting this was not an isolated construction but part of a broader pattern of early activity in the landscape. Whether the earthwork itself served a defensive, agricultural, or ceremonial function is not something the surviving traces can settle.

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Pete F
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