Fulacht fia, Ballinvrinsig, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Settlement Sites
In a field in Ballinvrinsig, Co. Cork, a low, irregular mound sits quietly in the landscape, its modest height of roughly 0.2 metres giving little indication of what it once was.
This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically consisting of a mound of fire-cracked stones accumulated beside a trough or pit. The mound here has been partially levelled, apparently through the removal of material over time, which accounts for why it now presents so unremarkably to the eye.
When archaeologist Walsh documented the site in 1985, the mound was considerably more pronounced, standing at around 0.6 metres high and measuring roughly 8 metres by 3 metres. That reduction in height over the intervening decades reflects a pattern common to many such sites, where the distinctive horseshoe-shaped or irregular heaps of burnt stone are gradually eroded, ploughed into, or quarried for convenient hard fill. What makes this particular spot a little more interesting is that a second fulacht fia lies in the same field, approximately 70 metres to the south-southeast. The clustering of two such sites in close proximity is not unheard of, but it does invite questions about the intensity of activity in this area during prehistory, and whether both sites were in use concurrently or represent separate episodes of occupation across a longer span of time.