Standing Stones & Stone Circles

Stone circles are believed to be places of ritual or ceremony and date from about 1500BC in the late Bronze age to 600BC in the Iron Age. 235 circles have been recorded in Ireland with almost half of these found in Cork and Kerry. Standing stones can be difficult to class and thousands have been identified. Their function and age can be difficult to determine without expert analysis. Many seem to have been erected as boundary markers, indicators of routeways, or burial markers. They can be plain or contain complex carvings such as swirls, cup marks, Ogham or early Christian crosses.