Fulacht fia, Reenturk, Co. Kerry
Co. Kerry |
Settlement Sites
A low rise in a Kerry field, barely a quarter of a metre at its tallest and easily mistaken for a natural undulation in the ground, turns out to be the remnant of a fulacht fia, one of the most common yet still somewhat puzzling monument types in the Irish landscape.
Fulachtaí fia are prehistoric cooking sites, typically Bronze Age, where stones were heated in fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to the boil. The spent, heat-fractured stones were raked aside after each use, and over time this debris accumulated into the distinctive horseshoe-shaped mound that archaeologists recognise today.
At Reenturk, the site came to light when a drain was cut through the northern edge of the mound, exposing a shallow layer of burnt soil and stone in the drain's faces. The spoil removed during that work yielded the same material: heat-fractured stones, burnt soil, and small quantities of charcoal, the residue of repeated high-temperature activity carried out here at some point in prehistory. The mound itself extends roughly 7.4 metres in length and 5.4 metres further south from the point where the drain intersected it, sitting approximately 20 metres south of the northern field boundary and 50 metres east of the western boundary. Although the shape is difficult to trace clearly on the ground, the surviving profile appears to follow the classical horseshoe form. That the mound survives at all, even in this subdued state, is a reminder of how quietly these sites persist beneath ordinary agricultural land.