Enclosure

The National Monuments Service's description

The sites comprising this monument group are located on and under a large limestone reef from which the townland takes its name. The sites include a cave (KE030-068----), two enclosures (KE030-100/101----) and a cairn (KE030-102----). The Cave at Cloghermore was excavated over two seasons between 1999-2000 under license number 99E0431. Excavation by Michael Connolly under licence No. 99E0431 was summarised as follows; 'During this second season, excavation continued both inside the cave itself and inside the D-shaped enclosure (KE030-063---) on the surface. Inside the cave the three remaining quadrants of the chamber known as ‘The Graveyard’ were excavated, and most of the soil that formed the upper layer in the sloping entrance gallery was removed.
The enclosure excavation
Three further trenches, in addition to the one excavated last year (Excavations 1999, 113–14), were opened, two in the interior and one across the enclosing bank. The trench across the bank confirmed the findings from last year—the bank was composed of two stone-and-earth banks with a ditch between them; however, the ditch here was cut into the underlying boulder clay rather than through the bedrock.
The trenches opened in the interior, on the western and east-south-eastern sides of the entrance shaft, indicated that a bowl-shaped depression had been excavated around the entrance and subsequently filled. This was presumably necessary to facilitate enlargement of the natural opening to the cave and construction of the drystone walling of the entrance shaft.
The largest trench was that opened on the eastern and south-eastern sides of the entrance shaft (4.5m north–south x 7.5m). Centrally placed within the trench were the remains of a pyre where the animal bone uncovered within the stone setting in ‘The Graveyard’ had been cremated. The pyre was situated in a subcircular depression from which a flue extended eastward.
Elsewhere in the trench, 22 stake- and post-holes, as well as two slot-trenches, were excavated. The holes varied in diameter from 0.06m to 0.8m, and a number of the post-holes contained stones, which were probably used as packing for the wooden posts. The longer of the two slot-trenches was truncated by the later flue of the cremation pyre, while the decorated side plates of a bone comb were also recovered from this slot-trench' (Connolly 2002).

References

Connolly, M., Coyne, F. and Lynch, L.G. 2005 Underworld: death and burial in Cloghermore Cave, Co. Kerry. Wordwell Ltd. Bray.

Connolly M. 2002 Cloghermore Cave, Cloghermore. In I. Bennett (ed.) Excavations 2000: summary accounts of archaeological excavations in Ireland, 143-48.