Fulacht fia, Pluckanes, Co. Cork

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Pluckanes, Co. Cork

Beside a stream in the boggy ground at Pluckanes in County Cork, a low horseshoe-shaped mound sits largely forgotten in the landscape.

It measures roughly twelve metres east to west and rises to about a metre in height, its opening, some three and a half metres wide, facing west toward the water. The mound is composed of burnt and fire-cracked stone, the characteristic debris of a fulacht fia, and it has been slowly swallowed by vegetation over the centuries.

A fulacht fia is a type of prehistoric cooking site found in enormous numbers across Ireland, typically dated to the Bronze Age, though some examples are earlier or later. The basic method involved heating stones in a fire and then dropping them into a water-filled trough to bring it to a boil. Repeated heating and sudden cooling caused the stones to fracture and eventually become useless, and so they were raked out and discarded nearby. Over time, these rejected stones accumulated into the distinctive horseshoe or kidney-shaped mounds that survive today. The positioning of this example on the eastern bank of a stream is entirely typical; proximity to a reliable water source was essential to the whole process, and many fulachtaí fia cluster along watercourses and in low-lying, seasonally wet ground.

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