Fulacht fia, Dromaloughane, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
In a field just south of a medieval tower house on the Iveragh Peninsula, there is a low mound that most people would walk past without a second glance.
It is barely half a metre high, roughly circular, and measures about fifteen metres across. Yet beneath its flat-topped surface lies a record of prehistoric activity that predates the tower house by potentially thousands of years: fire-cracked stone, blackened soil, and a deep seam of charcoal, the unmistakable signature of a fulacht fia.
A fulacht fia is a type of ancient cooking or processing site found across Ireland in enormous numbers, most dating from the Bronze Age. The typical arrangement involved a trough filled with water, heated by dropping stones that had been fired in a nearby hearth directly into the liquid. Over time, the cracked and spent stones were raked aside, building up into the low, horseshoe-shaped or circular mounds that survive today. The Dromaloughane example follows this pattern closely. When its northern edge was disturbed during golf course construction in 1993, a cross-section through the mound became visible, confirming the characteristic fill of shattered stone and charcoal-rich dark soil. That disturbance, while unfortunate, provided a rare window into the mound's composition without any formal excavation having taken place.
The site sits in pasture a short distance from Dromaloughane tower house, a later medieval structure that speaks to a very different era of occupation in the same landscape. The proximity of the two monuments, separated by perhaps two millennia of history, is a reminder of how continuously this corner of Kerry was used and settled across time.