Fulacht fia, Steelaun, Co. Mayo

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Settlement Sites

Fulacht fia, Steelaun, Co. Mayo

In a damp, rush-grown pasture on a south-east-facing slope in County Mayo, a low crescent of shattered stone barely half a metre high marks the remains of a fulacht fia, a type of prehistoric cooking or processing site found in great numbers across Ireland.

The mound, roughly eight metres north to south and six metres east to west, takes a roughly C-shaped form with a hollow at its western side, the hollow likely indicating where a trough once sat. The material is characteristic of the type: angular, fire-cracked stone fragments packed into a dark, charred soil matrix, the accumulated debris of heating stones in a fire and then plunging them into water-filled troughs to bring the liquid to the boil.

What makes this particular spot quietly remarkable is not any single mound but the density of similar features gathered around it. Within a radius of roughly ninety metres, there are at least three further burnt mounds and fulachta fiadh close by, suggesting this sheltered natural terrace, tucked beneath a ridge that rises steeply to the north-west, was returned to repeatedly over time, perhaps across generations. A modern field wall cuts across the western edge of the mound, and a cattle track runs east to west through its centre, the ordinary rhythms of later farming life pressing through a much older landscape without entirely erasing it.

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Pete F
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