What is recorded here

Kill hill in County Kildare, Ireland holds a green Silurian slate boulder marked with cupmarks and rings. People cleared a rough circle of boulders from the hill slope in 1990, exposing the decorated stone near an older hilltop enclosure. The complex patterns suggest repeated pecking, perhaps for ceremony, practice or memory, before the stone left the hill for a museum.

Discovered in 1990 when a 'rough circle or arc of boulders' (est. diam. c. 20m) was cleared off the SE slope of Kill hill, c. 500m E of a hilltop enclosure (KD020-001----). 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; DU018-412----). Compiled by: Gearóid Conroy Date of upload: 19 March 2014

Likely dating to the Neolithic or Bronze Age, the rock art may have had ritual or territorial significance, possibly linked to the nearby hilltop enclosure. The arrangement of the boulders suggests a ceremonial or symbolic function, though specific folklore or use remains unrecorded.

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