Each month we will focus in on a different Irish field monument. These will be stored in a Monument Archive for you to browse.
Monument of the Month		October 2005
Fulachtaí Fia These usually survive as low mounds, often horseshoe-shaped, of charcoal-enriched soil packed with fragments of heat-shattered stones (termed ‘burnt material'); when levelled they are often noticeable as black spreads in ploughed fields.
They were usually situated close to a water source, such as a stream or spring, or in wet marshy areas. They can occur singly or in groups of up to ten. It is generally accepted that they were probably used as cooking places. Water was boiled in a rectangular pit (lined with wooden planks or stone slabs to line a trough) by the addition of hot stones from a fire close by. Recent practical demonstrations has shown that meat, wrapped in straw and immersed in the boiling water, cooked at a rate of twenty minutes per pound weight. When the cooking was over, the remnants of heat-shattered stones in the trough were discarded to one side. Eventually, after many cookings, these would form a mound curving round three sides of the trough, hence the horseshoe-shape of the mound. It is not certain whether Fulachtaí Fia were elements of temporary hunting camps or of permanent settlements. The majority of available radiocarbon dates place these monuments in the Bronze Age. They are the most numerous prehistoric sites in Ireland, with over 4,500 known examples.
The word ‘fulacht' means a pit used for cooking. The second element can be interpreted as either ‘fia' meaning ‘of the deer' or ‘of the wild' or ‘fian' meaning ‘of a roving band of hunters or warriors' or ‘of the fianna or Fionn Mac Cumhail'.

 

Previous Monuments of the Month - Click here