THE MARKS OF TIME
Sometimes, as happened in the summer of 2018, the less visible past reveals itself, just for a moment, and then quickly vanishes.
ON VERY RARE OCCASIONS, during unusually hot, dry summers, normally hidden features can appear on the landscape. This can occur in two ways. Areas where the remains of buildings lie just underground or where a stretch of land has been repeatedly walked upon are always drier. During a heat wave, vegetation there will wither more quickly, creating brown parch marks that contrast with the surrounding grassy areas. Most of the sites here follow this pattern. By contrast, more moisture collects in areas that in antiquity were taken up with ditches or were dug in other ways. In a heat wave, those areas will remain greener than the surrounding landscape. Such is the case with the Neolithic monument in Ireland’s
