A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
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volcanic neck
A volcanic neck is the solidified plug of magma that filled the central conduit of a volcano, left standing after the softer cone around it has eroded away. It is a tower of hard rock rising abruptly from flat country, often with radiating walls of rock running out from its base where magma also filled cracks in the surrounding ground. It is the inside of a volcano turned inside out by time.
Etymology
The English term is a plain anatomical metaphor, describing the narrow throat of the volcano. The radiating walls are dikes, from a Scots word for a wall, and the whole structure is the eroded remains of the plumbing rather than of the mountain.
Notes
Ship Rock in northwestern New Mexico is the standard example, standing around 1,600 feet above the plain with three long dikes running out from it, and it is a sacred site to the Diné, who know it as the winged rock. Devils Tower in Wyoming is a related feature of a different kind. The plug at Le Puy-en-Velay in France has a chapel on top, reached by a stair cut into the rock.