15Ní Cheallaigh, Máirín. "Going Astray in the Fort Field: 'Traditional' Attitudes Towards Ringforts in Nineteenth-Century Ireland." The Journal of Irish Archaeology, 15 (2006): 107.
According to Ni Cheallaigh, "More than most other monuments of the Irish archaeological record, ringforts have lain at the intersection of diverging worlds of symbolic imaginings that encompass a wide variety of interacting social and cultural identities. These overlapping worlds have ranged from the cottages of the rural tenant labourer and farmer to the salons of the antiquarian elite and the excavation trench of the archaeologist. Engagement with the physical remains of ringforts was, and is, articulated through the social structures and belief systems of those who visited, actively avoided or, equally consciously, obliterated them."
The initial quotation is from Bourke, Angela. The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story. New York: Viking, 2000. 48.