Fulacht fia, Baysrath, Co. Kilkenny

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Baysrath, Co. Kilkenny

At the edge of a boggy stretch of land in County Kilkenny, a low crescent-shaped mound of fire-cracked stones once marked the site of a Bronze Age cooking place.

A fulacht fia, as these features are known, is a type of outdoor hearth and water-heating station common across prehistoric Ireland: stones were heated in a fire, then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil, typically for cooking meat. The remains at Baysrath were buried and largely forgotten until road construction work brought them back into view.

The site was excavated in 2007 ahead of the N9/N10 Kilcullen to Waterford road scheme, and what emerged was a roughly fifteen-metre-square mound of heat-fractured stones and charcoal-rich clay, sitting on marginal land caught between bog to the north-east and rising pasture to the south-west. Two distinct troughs were identified within the mound. The better-preserved one measured roughly 1.64 metres east to west and 1.1 metres north to south, with six stake-holes clustered at its corners, most likely the traces of a wooden lining fitted around the inside edge. Only a fragment of the second trough survived. Four irregular pits, all filled with the same combination of shattered stone and charcoal-rich material, completed the picture of sustained, repeated use. Radiocarbon dating placed the activity firmly in the Late Bronze Age: hazel charcoal from the mound returned a date of 1125 to 938 cal BC, while charcoal from one of the stake-holes dated to 1025 to 903 cal BC. The mound and its associated features extended beyond the excavation boundary, so the full extent of the site remains unknown. Perhaps more striking is what lies nearby: approximately 200 metres to the south-west sits a large ceremonial and habitation complex, suggesting that this modest cooking site was once part of a much busier landscape.

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