What is recorded here

Indicated is a radial-stone cairn on a Galway ridge, built with eighteen slabs pointing inward like a compass drawn in rock. It stands near ancient tombs and may have begun with twenty-four stones, suggesting a time when people marked the sky or death with geometry rather than memory. The oval shape resists easy explanation, inviting wonder about what those builders valued enough to arrange stone across open pasture.

This structure is situated near the top of a ridge in rough pasture land about 0.8km E of the megalithic tombs (GA125-119---, GA125-120----, GA125-128----) in Marblehill (de Valera and Ó Nualláin 1972, 21-23, Ga. 26-28). The stone circle (GA125-039----) in Commons East (Ó Nualláin 1983, 148) lies about 3.2km to the SE. Eighteen radially set slabs delimit an oval measuring 7m E-W by 6m N-S. The slabs are 0.5 to lm in length and are exposed to depths varying from 0.4 to lm. McMahon (1978, 79-80) suggested that the circle may have originally consisted of 'twenty-four stones'. Stones exposed within the ring of radials suggest that this is best interpreted as a radial-stone cairn, a type of monument that is generally found associated with the later Bronze Age stone circle complex in SW Ireland. Only twenty examples are known and there is a second example in the county at Rooghaun (GA114-181----), some 23km to the NW just east of Ardrahan. (Ó Nualláin 1984, 77, No. 17) Compiled by: Paul Walsh Updated by: Olive Alcock Date of revised upload: 12 October 2015

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