Rock art, Derrynablaha, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
On a south-facing slope of upland heath pasture in the Iveragh Peninsula, at roughly 252 metres above sea level, a small sandstone boulder sits earthfast in the ground.
It measures little more than a metre across and barely reaches ankle height, yet its upper surface carries markings that were almost certainly made in prehistory: three cupmarks and a cup-and-ring. Cupmarks are shallow, roughly circular depressions pecked into rock by hand, and when a ring is added around a central cup, the resulting motif is one of the most widespread yet least understood forms of prehistoric carving found across Atlantic Europe. What makes this boulder more than just a curiosity is its company.
This stone is one of a cluster of six decorated stones gathered within a remarkably compact area of hillside, roughly 16 metres by 8 metres, overlooking the Kealduff River valley. The carvings on this particular boulder are weathered but legible: the three single cupmarks are each around four centimetres in diameter and only about three millimetres deep, while the cup-and-ring is larger, with a total diameter of approximately fifteen centimetres and a central cup five centimetres across. The sandstone itself is rough and unfractured, and the decorated surface faces south. A nearby stone in the same cluster lies just over three metres to the southwest, and Lough Brin sits to the east. The site was recorded by Emmanuel Anati as early as 1963 and later discussed by Finlay in 1973, placing it within a longer tradition of scholarly attention to Kerry's prehistoric rock art, though the concentration of decorated stones in so small an area remains relatively unusual even within the broader Irish corpus.
The site sits within a stony stretch of heath pasture on the southern slopes of the Iveragh Peninsula, and the terrain reflects that: rough underfoot, open to the weather, with the kind of long views across river valley and lough that seem to have mattered to the people who chose these locations. The carvings are shallow and the stone is low-lying, so they reward patience and a low angle of light rather than a quick glance from a standing position.