Fulacht fia, Moyne, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Moyne, Co. Kilkenny

Between the Deen and Gloshia rivers in County Kilkenny, on a marshy terrace just below the crest of a ridge, lies a prehistoric site that has effectively disappeared into the landscape.

The field above the small stream that once marked its location has been reclaimed and converted to pasture, and nothing is visible at ground level. What was once detectable as a fulacht fia, one of the most common prehistoric monument types in Ireland, has been absorbed back into the ordinary agricultural countryside.

A fulacht fia is a burnt mound, typically the remains of an outdoor cooking or processing site from the Bronze Age. They are usually identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone and charcoal, accumulated over repeated use beside a water source, where water was heated by dropping hot stones into a trough. This particular site sits on the south-eastern side of a ridge, north of a small stream on what the ground conditions suggest would once have been boggy, low-lying terrain, exactly the kind of wet, sheltered spot where fulachtaí fia are routinely found across the country. Prendergast, writing in 1977, identified it as one of two such monuments located immediately adjacent to each other in this part of Moyne, a pairing that makes the site of some interest, since clustered burnt mounds can suggest more intensive or repeated activity in a single area over time.

There is nothing to see here now. The pasture that replaced the field shows no surface trace of the monument, and no amount of careful looking is likely to change that. The site's interest lies less in what can be observed and more in what the topography quietly preserves, a stretch of ridge between two rivers that was, at some point in prehistory, a place people returned to.

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Pete F
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