Fulacht fia, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Mangerton, Co. Kerry

On the south-east-facing slope of Mangerton Mountain in County Kerry, a pear-shaped mound of burnt material sits quietly on the west bank of a stream, its northern end rising to about 1.2 metres.

It measures roughly 8 metres north to south and just over 4 metres east to west. The stream that runs beside it has eaten into its eastern edge over time. To most walkers crossing the rough hill pasture here, it would read as nothing more than a lump in the ground.

What the mound actually represents is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found widely across Ireland and dated broadly to the Bronze Age, though some examples span earlier and later periods. The typical fulacht fia consisted of a trough, often timber-lined or cut into the earth, into which water was poured. Stones were heated in a nearby fire and dropped into the trough to bring the water to a boil, then used to cook meat or possibly to process other materials. The discarded, heat-shattered stones were thrown to one side after each use, building up over repeated firings into the characteristic horseshoe or mound shape visible today. The burnt, fragmented stone gives these sites their distinctively dark, crumbly appearance. This example sits within a network of field boundaries and is positioned close to running water, both entirely typical features of the monument type. A hut site lies roughly 150 metres to the east-north-east, suggesting the area once supported at least some degree of settled or seasonal activity on the mountain's slopes.

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Pete F
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