What is recorded here

Clearing the boulder circle on Kill hill in 1990 exposed a green slate stone carrying two vast motifs of cupmarks and rings. The maker repeated small hollows until they formed bands around larger cups, turning rock into a page of patient marks. That stone left for the National Museum of Ireland in 1993, but the hill keeps the shape of the discovery: a hidden circle, broken open, giving up its picture.

Discovered in 1990 when a 'rough circle or arc of boulders' (est. diam. c. 20m) was cleared off the SE slope of Kill hill, Co. Kildare (KD020-018----). It consists of a boulder of green Silurian slate (dims. L 1.54m; Wth 0.96m; H 0.4m) that has two surfaces decorated with two large, complex motifs consisting of cupmarks surrounded by alternating bands of small pecked cups and rings. There are also several ringed cups enclosed by bands of small cups, and simple ringed cupmarks (one with radial grooves), with the rest of one surface covered in small shallow cupmarks. The removed 'rough circle or arc of boulders', of chiefly Silurian slate with some red conglomerate, may have been the remnants of a cairn (Brindley 1987-91). The stone was removed to the National Museum of Ireland in 1993 (NMI 1994:58). Compiled by: Gearóid Conroy, Paul Walsh Date of upload: 19 March 2014

Likely dating to the Neolithic or Bronze Age, this rock art may have had ritual or symbolic significance, possibly linked to the surrounding rough stone circle. Its meaning remains unclear, though such art often reflects territorial markers, celestial observations, or spiritual beliefs.

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