Fulacht fia, Killoran, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Killoran, Co. Tipperary

At the base of a low glacial knoll in County Tipperary, a prehistoric cooking site lay completely invisible beneath the soil until construction work stripped away the topsoil and revealed it.

What emerged was a fulacht fia, a type of ancient outdoor cooking place found in great numbers across Ireland, typically dated to the Bronze Age. The basic principle involves heating stones in a fire, dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil, and using that heat to cook meat or process other materials. Thousands of these sites survive across the island, often recognised only by the characteristic horseshoe-shaped mound of discarded, heat-shattered stone that accumulates beside the trough over repeated use.

The Killoran example fits the type closely but preserves its details with unusual precision. The trough itself was subcircular, measuring roughly 1.94 metres east to west and 1.76 metres north to south, and sunk to a depth of around half a metre into the ground. It had been back-filled with fire-cracked stone and charcoal, the accumulated debris of repeated heating and quenching cycles. Partly sealing this trough was a truncated horseshoe-shaped spread of burnt sandstone, silt, and charcoal, measuring approximately 9.5 metres by 8 metres and surviving to a depth of 0.13 metres. The fact that the spread was described as truncated suggests that some portion had already been lost before the site was recorded. The site sits at the foot of a north-facing slope, a placement consistent with the tendency of fulachta fiadh to be located near low-lying, potentially wet ground where water would have been readily accessible.

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