Fulacht fia, Daars, Co. Kildare
Co. Kildare |
Settlement Sites
In a waterlogged pasture in Co. Kildare, pinched between two northward-flowing branches of the Morell River, a low oval mound sits quietly being trampled by cattle. It measures roughly eight metres east to west and five metres north to south, rising no more than half a metre at its highest point. What the livestock are unwittingly disturbing is almost certainly a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in great numbers across Ireland, typically dating from the Bronze Age. The usual form involves a trough filled with water, heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into it until the water boiled; the spent, shattered stones were then piled beside the trough, forming precisely the kind of low mound visible here. At Daars, the disturbed ground reveals flecks of charcoal but no burnt stone at the surface, which is unusual, and aerial photographs suggest the mound may once have been considerably larger than what survives today.
The site sits on what the landscape naturally offers a fulacht fia: a wet, low-lying tongue of ground flanked by watercourses on both sides, giving reliable access to water while remaining just above the flood level. A second candidate site of the same type lies only about twenty-five metres to the west, which raises the possibility that this small headland of pasture was used repeatedly, or by more than one group, over an extended period. Whether that second mound represents a separate episode of use or simply the same general activity spread across the ground is difficult to say without excavation. Together, the two features mark this otherwise unremarkable field as a place where people returned, built fires, heated stones, and processed food or drink over what may have been many generations of Bronze Age life along the Morell.