Cill Malkedar, an early Norman church and seat of the Chancellor of Ardfert
One of my favorite things to do is to walk the hills of the Dingle Peninsula in search of sites that I haven't yet found. There is nothing quite like the elation of finding an elusive site and realizing that you are standing on the exact spot where people lived, loved, worked, and died two thousand years ago or perhaps more. For me this qualifies as high-grade excitement.
The Dingle Peninsula is one of the richest environments in the world for the amateur or professional archeologist, rivaled only by our own American Southwest. (Locally the area is known as the Corca Dhuibhne, which means "the people of Dovinia," a pre-Christian goddess. It's pronounced KOR-kuh GWEE-nuh.)
The Archeological Survey of the Corca Dhuibhne, published in 1986, documents 1,572 known sites. Taking into account the considerable ravages of time and the changing patterns of landscape, the actual number has been increasing steadily since this valuable registry was published. Previously unknown sites are being discovered regularly.
Archeological and historical sites on the Peninsula can be divided into approximately twenty broad categories. These categories, and their numbers, as listed in the Survey, are: shell middens, 22; pre-bog field systems, 8; megalithic tombs, 19: stone alignments and standing stones, 86; rock art, 26; miscellaneous graves and burials, 22; cairns and mounds, 25; fulachta fiadh, 11; ring-barrows, 10; inland promontory forts, 2; coastal promontory forts, 19; ringforts, 450; isolated souterrains, 52; ogham stones, 21; early ecclesiastical sites, 68; old burial grounds, 32; holy wells, 51; bullaun stones, 7; church sites, 12; medieval churches, 19; castles or sites of castles, 12; huts (the so-called "beehives"), 505; and of course the Town of Dingle (more properly An Daingean, "the fortress") itself. Add to this list almost a hundred miscellaneous and unclassified sites and you have quite an exciting menu for the historically minded visitor. Keep in mind also that this incredible richness exists in an area of about ten by thirty miles.
I am sometimes asked by my guests if I have a favorite site or type of site. My usual answer is "the last one I visited," and for the most part I don't really have an absolutely favorite type of site. What I take the most satisfaction from is using all of the sites to create a kind of tapestry of Irish history and culture for my guests. It's all here, from the shell middens of the first human inhabitants of the Peninsula up to modern times, including the often gory reminders of Elizabethan conquest and the fury of Cromwellian destruction and brutality.
As a qualification to my statement above (That I don't have a favorite type of site)I would have to say that the early ecclesiastical sites are among the most fascinating to me. From before Patrick's arrival in Ireland— some say long before— there was an early Christian presence in the Corca Dhuibhne. Being able to stand inside an enclosure belonging to one of the first (and perhaps the first) Christian settlements on the Peninsula is a strange and very pleasant experience. Readers of Thomas Cahill's How the Irish Saved Civilization are sure to understand this special relationship with a place.
My friends Micheál and Áine Ó Dubhshláine certainly understood it, as they lived with it every day. Prior to Micheál's untimely death in 2006, one of favorite activities together was to go about the countryside of the Corca Dhuibhne to visit sites that we had not yet explored. Our main tools were a good ordnance survey map and a compass (a GPS would be added later), a good pair of boots, and the resolve to come back with something new in our notebooks and cameras.
For me, the pleasures of archeology and history in the Corca Dhuibhne are virtually infinite. All of Ireland is here: all the history, the human drama, all the great tapestry that is the rich and complex culture of Ireland. And all of it surrounded by one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world. Truly, for this particular traveler, it is a cornucopia of delights.