Fulacht fia, Uragh, Co. Kerry

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Uragh, Co. Kerry

On the south bank of a river in rough boggy pasture near Uragh in south-west Kerry, a low crescent-shaped mound sits quietly in the landscape, sod-covered and easy to overlook.

It measures twelve metres along its north-west to south-east axis and rises to about a metre in height, its opening facing south-west. What it contains is less ordinary than it appears: a compressed mass of burnt material, the accumulated debris of repeated firing and quenching over what may have been centuries.

This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, with Kerry alone holding hundreds of recorded examples. The name, loosely translated from the Irish, refers to a cooking place associated with roaming bands of hunters, though scholars have debated the term's origins and the precise range of activities these sites hosted. The basic technology was straightforward: stones were heated in a fire and then dropped into a water-filled trough to bring it to boiling point, after which meat could be cooked. The discarded, heat-shattered stones built up over time into the characteristic horseshoe or crescent-shaped mound that survives today. At Uragh, that mound has eroded somewhat at its north-western end, but its form remains legible, a quiet record of repeated, practical activity carried out here by people who chose this spot on a north-east-facing slope beside a reliable water source.

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Pete F
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