Fulacht fia, Gortavranner, Co. Cork

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Gortavranner, Co. Cork

In a waterlogged field at Gortavranner, a horseshoe-shaped mound of burnt stone sits quietly in rough grazing land, its opening facing south-east toward a natural spring.

The mound measures roughly 12.6 metres long, 16 metres wide, and 1.5 metres high, with a gap of about 4 metres at its mouth. A depression or old trackway cuts across it from north-west to south-east, bisecting the mound and hinting at later activity that partially obscured whatever came before.

This is a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking or processing site found in great numbers across Ireland, particularly in low-lying, wet ground close to a water source. The typical arrangement involved a trough, usually timber-lined or stone-lined and filled with water, which was heated by dropping fire-cracked stones into it. Those shattered, heat-spent stones were raked out and discarded in a crescent-shaped heap around the trough, which is exactly the kind of mound visible here. The waterlogged surroundings and the nearby spring to the east fit the pattern precisely; these sites were not chosen at random but placed deliberately where water was reliable and the ground retained it. Most fulachtaí fia date to the Bronze Age, roughly between 1500 and 500 BC, though some are earlier or later, and their precise function, whether for cooking, textile processing, bathing, or some combination, remains a matter of ongoing discussion among archaeologists.

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Pete F
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