Fulacht fia, Loughbown, Co. Galway

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Loughbown, Co. Galway

In a field at Loughbown in County Galway, a low grass-covered mound sits quietly in the landscape, its horseshoe shape the only real clue that something deliberate once happened here.

It measures roughly 12.6 metres northeast to southwest and 11 metres northwest to southeast, rising less than a metre above the surrounding ground, and it opens towards the north. Scattered through it are traces of burnt stone and chert, the characteristic debris of a fulacht fia.

A fulacht fia is a type of prehistoric cooking site found in considerable numbers across Ireland, typically consisting of a mound of heat-shattered stone accumulated beside a trough that would have been filled with water and heated using fire-cracked rocks. They date broadly to the Bronze Age, though some sites were in use across longer periods. What makes this particular example quietly notable is its immediate proximity to another fulacht fiadh, located just to the northwest. Two such sites so close together suggest repeated or sustained activity in this spot, perhaps across generations, or perhaps serving different functions within the same broader area of use. The burnt chert visible in the mound is a small but tangible trace of those fires, the stone fractured by repeated heating and cooling over what may have been centuries of intermittent use.

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