Earthwork, Westquarter, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Ritual/Ceremonial

Earthwork, Westquarter, Co. Galway

On a steep north-facing slope above Ballynakill Harbour in Connemara, there is a structure that archaeology cannot quite name.

A low outline of set boulders traces a rough rectangle into the hillside, and that is more or less all that can be said with certainty. The remains are, in the formal language of the discipline, insufficient to permit classification, which is a quietly arresting admission. Something was built here, someone arranged these stones with purpose, and the record has worn too thin to say what that purpose was.

The structure measures 7.4 metres in length and between 1.3 and 1.6 metres in width, oriented roughly west-northwest to east-southeast, with the boulders reaching a maximum height of around 45 centimetres. Paul Gosling documented it in the Archaeological Inventory of County Galway, published in 1993, and the description has remained essentially static since. The dimensions are too modest for most obvious categories, the proportions slightly too narrow for a typical enclosure, and the setting, on a slope overlooking a harbour mouth, does not resolve the question. It could be a field boundary, a shelter, a platform, or something older and stranger. The ground has not given up the distinction.

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Pete F
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