What is recorded here

Garrane South holds a two-metre rock slab beside ancient walls, marked with seven cupmarks and nine ringed cups that turf cutting revealed beneath modern pasture. The road bisects the old field system, forcing people to drive past clues rather than walk them. Half the circles faded through weather or time, leaving the completed ones sharp enough to trace with a finger. What is missing is not importance but attention, since the stones still sit where they fell and wait for someone to stop scrolling long enough to see them.

On a farm road (long axis N-S), in reclaimed and improved pasture. Not located. This monument is recorded in O’Sullivan & Sheehan (1996, 28) along with a pre-bog field system. According to O’Sullivan & Sheehan (ibid) ‘turf cutting has revealed a series of walls in an area measuring 140m N-S x 250m E-W….The complex is bisected by a modern road’. The rock outcrop (2.05m x 1m) containing the rock art motifs is ‘located close to one of the walls’. The decorated surface is described as having ‘seven cupmarks, eight cup-and-rings and one cup-and-two rings on its upper surface. Half of the circles are incomplete, possibly as a result of weathering. A scattering of pockmarks occurs to one side of the rock art motifs (ibid). Compiled by: Alison McQueen and Vera Rahilly Date of upload: 5 July 2017

Likely dating to the Neolithic or Bronze Age, the rock art in Garrane South may have had ritual or territorial significance, possibly linked to early farming communities. Its meaning remains undeciphered, but such art often reflects symbolic or spiritual expressions of the people who created it.

The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.