Burnt spread, Rossanean, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Ritual/Ceremonial
In a waterlogged field in Rossanean townland, County Kerry, a stretch of scorched earth roughly ten metres long hints at something far older than the drainage ditch that now cuts through it.
The burnt material, visible in cross-section along the side of a field drain to about a metre in depth, is the kind of quiet, easily overlooked feature that most people would walk past without a second thought. Yet its character and setting point strongly towards it being a fulacht fia, a class of prehistoric cooking site found widely across Ireland, typically in low-lying or boggy ground near water. These sites consist of the accumulated debris from repeated episodes of heating stones in fire, then dropping them into water-filled troughs to bring the water to a boil, leaving behind a characteristic mound of fire-cracked, blackened stone and charcoal.
The archaeologist M. J. O'Kelly, whose 1954 work on fulachtaí fia remains a foundational reference, included a site in Rossanean townland in his catalogue, and the spread visible at this location may well correspond to that record. O'Kelly's excavations and surveys in the mid-twentieth century did much to establish what these monuments were and how they functioned, having previously puzzled antiquarians for generations. The burnt spread here is not an isolated anomaly either; a second possible fulacht fia lies approximately seventy-five metres to the south, suggesting this particular stretch of Kerry countryside was used repeatedly, perhaps over many generations, for the communal or functional activities these sites are thought to represent.
