Fulacht fia, Stripe, Co. Mayo
Co. Mayo |
Settlement Sites
Some archaeological sites are remarkable for what survives.
This one in Stripe, County Mayo, is quietly notable for what probably does not. A fulacht fia, the term for a type of prehistoric cooking or processing site typically identified by a horseshoe-shaped mound of fire-cracked stone and a timber-lined trough, was recorded here on the basis of information from a local source and entered into the national record in 1991, with the listing carried forward into the Record of Monuments and Places in 1997. When inspectors visited the following year, there was nothing to see.
The site lies in a valley to the south of a north-west-flowing stream, a setting that would be entirely consistent with a genuine fulacht fia; these sites are almost always found near water, since the trough at their centre needed to be filled and kept wet. What the 1997 inspection found instead was an area heavily disturbed by the operations of a nearby commercial quarry. The ground had been reworked to such a degree that no visible trace of the original feature remained, and the assessment reached at the time was straightforward: if a fulacht fia had ever existed here, it had in all likelihood been destroyed before anyone could properly document it.