312 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



the hill is broken by a series of remarkable cliff-walled rifts which cut across 

 it from N.N.W. to S.S.E. These rifts are about 100 to 300 yards across, and 

 100 to 200 feet in depth, and they produce a singular and picturesque effect 

 (Plate XI, figs. 1, 2). They appear to be the result of weathering along a 

 series of strong vertical joints ; and the presence of the same series of joints in 

 the sui'rounding country may be seen in the parallel ridges and hollows of 

 the country to the northward, and the consequent direction of streams and 

 roads ; and also in the prevailing directions of the shores of the island-studded 

 Lough Arrow. 



The country surrounding Carrowkeel is generally fertile, and no doubt 

 supported a large population since early times. These people have left 

 abundant monuments of their occupation, and earns are unusually nimaerous 

 in the district, ranging in size from the gigantic monument which crowns the 

 summit of Knocknarea, 16 miles to the north-west of Carrowkeel, to small 

 mounds a few yards in diameter. 



The series of earns which rise among the heather on the summit of 

 Carrowkeel, and with which the present report is concerned, have been 

 referred to, but no more, by previous writers. Eev. C. Cosgrave, P.P., 

 alludes to them in the Proceedings of the Kilkenny Archaeological Society, 

 vol. iii, p. 58 (1854-5), and Colonel Wood-Martin in " Eude Stone Monuments 

 of Ireland," p. 207(1888), makes a passing mention of them. 



The earns were examined by E. LI. Praeger in 1896, while he was engaged 

 on botanical sur\'ey work ; and as several of them appeared to be intact, and 

 as the group promised to repay well the labour of opening them, the present 

 investigation has after some years been undertaken. 



While on the di'ift-covered lowlands such earns are frequently formed of 

 clay, here on the hill-top they are formed entirely of local limestone, which 

 is a splintery rock with much chert irregularly disposed. No doubt as 

 originally built they were constructed of blocks such as a man could lift 

 conveniently. But three to four thousand years' exposure to heat and cold, 

 rain and frost, have shattered the already splintery boulders, so that the earns 

 are now mounds formed to a considerable extent of material like coarse road- 

 metal, with large blocks between — material difficult to excavate, being too 

 coarse and interlocked for spade work, and too much broken up for convenient 

 pitching by hand. 



Relation of the Cams to the Peat. 



At present the greater part of the flat summit of Carrowkeel is densely 

 heather-clad, the heather growing on a layer of peat several feet in thickness. 

 Bog much deeper than this is met with in many places on the hill, especially 

 in the rifts, but not in the proximity of the earns on the cliff-walled ridges. 



