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Cairn

Cairn, clearance cairn

What is recorded here

Clearance cairns on Kinnagoe Hill, County Donegal. Three small heaps, perhaps a metre wide and sixty centimetres high, sit ten to fifteen metres apart on a south-facing terrace. They are not grand monuments but the rejected stones of someone making a field usable, dropped where they fell rather than carried away. The real story is human patience: lifting rock from soil until the land could be worked, then leaving the useless behind.
A group of three small possible field clearance cairns (DG029-058002/003-) situated on an E-W terrace on the S facing slope of Kinnagoe Hill. A hut site (DG029-048) is located 75m to the SW, a second cairn (DG029-058001-) is located 15m to the SE and a third cairn (DG029-058002-) is 10m to the E. These small cairns may be associated with a field system (DG029-059002-). The heather covered field walls of this field system can be seen to the N and S of the cairns. This heather covered cairn (diam. 3m; H 0.6m) may be the result of field clearance of the terrace on which the cairn is situated. A second possible hut site (DG029-059001-) is located 15m to the SW. Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of upload/revision : 24 November 2010
A Neolithic or early Bronze Age clearance cairn; its significance lies in its association with early agricultural activity and possible settlement in the Kinnagoe Hill area.

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What survives
Recorded monument

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