Enclosure, Dromteewakeen, Co. Kerry

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Enclosures

Enclosure, Dromteewakeen, Co. Kerry

On the Iveragh Peninsula in County Kerry, a low ring of stone lies beneath a skin of turf, easy to walk past and easier still to mistake for a natural rise in the ground.

What it actually marks is a small enclosed space, roughly subcircular in shape and measuring just 5.1 metres across internally, defined by a bank that has been absorbing the bog for long enough that the two are now difficult to separate.

Small stone enclosures of this kind are a recurring feature of the Irish landscape, particularly in the west and south-west. They are generally understood as early medieval or prehistoric in origin, though their precise functions vary: some enclosed settlement activity, some served as animal pens or garden plots, and others may have had a ceremonial or boundary-marking purpose. Without excavation it is rarely possible to say which. This particular example at Dromteewakeen was recorded and described as part of the archaeological survey of the Iveragh Peninsula compiled by A. O'Sullivan and J. Sheehan, published by Cork University Press in 1996, a systematic effort to catalogue the extraordinary density of ancient monuments across this part of south Kerry. The peninsula, a broad finger of land reaching into the Atlantic, contains one of the highest concentrations of archaeological sites in Ireland, many of them still unexcavated and poorly understood.

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