Fulacht fia, Raheen, Co. Clare

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Raheen, Co. Clare

Scattered across the Irish landscape in their thousands, fulachtaí fia are among the most common yet least understood monuments in the country.

The one recorded at Raheen in County Clare belongs to a class of prehistoric cooking site, typically dating to the Bronze Age, that appears so frequently in boggy ground and near water sources that archaeologists sometimes joke they are impossible to avoid. A fulacht fia generally survives as a horseshoe-shaped or kidney-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone and dark, charred soil, the debris accumulated over repeated use of a simple but effective technology: stones heated in a fire and dropped into a water-filled trough until the water boiled, then used to cook meat or, as some researchers have argued, for bathing, brewing, or industrial processes. The burnt stone was tossed aside after each use, and over time these discarded heaps became the low, blackened mounds that field surveyors still stumble across today.

The Raheen example sits within a county that has no shortage of prehistoric remains, from the limestone pavements of the Burren with their megalithic tombs to the ringforts and souterrains that dot the interior parishes. Clare's wetlands and stream margins would have made them attractive locations for exactly the kind of waterside activity a fulacht fia required. Beyond its location and monument type, the specific details of this particular site, its dimensions, its precise setting, its condition, and any associated finds, are not currently available in the public record.

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