Fulacht fia

The National Monuments Service's description

Situated in enclosed land at the foot of the steep S-facing slopes of Knocknaveen (known locally as ‘Glan Hill’). The fulacht fia is now overlain by the island’s West Road and the roadside bank on the southern side of same. There is no visible trace of any stream nearby but the location, at hill foot, is likely to have produced surface run-off after rain; the centre of the fulacht fia is 5m to E of a culvert that runs beneath the road. The immediate topography must have extensively remodelled during the construction of the road, an event that took place sometime before 1816. Another fulacht fia (MA085-016001-) lies c. 47m to SSE further downslope. The fulacht fia was noted during fieldwork at Easter 1992, it had been exposed by drain cutting the previous year. It consists of a dense layer of small heat-fractured stone visible in the northern face of the drain directly under a field gate (now defunct). An archaeological excavation (92E163) was conducted on this monument in September–October 1992 (King 2007, 239-248).
An E-W section was excavated through the mound (8.2m E-W; H 0.6m) of burnt stone and charcoal, where it was exposed in a drainage trench (King 2007, 239-244). The N-S limit could not be ascertained as the mound partly underlies a modern road bordering the field. The mound was composed of several layers of varying densities of stone and charcoal. The lack of uniformity in the layers appeared to indicate different phases of accumulation reflecting different usages of the site, including at least three separate firings of stones. A radiocarbon sample produced a date suggesting activity at the site in the later Bronze Age during the period 1260-1010 BC (Ibid. 246). A pestle stone (NMI 1992:09) of green sandstone was found c. 5m E of the fulacht fia in spoil from a re-cut drain.

The above description is derived from: New Survey of Clare Island. Volume 5: Archaeology. Edited by Paul Gosling, Conleth Manning and John Waddell. (Royal Irish Academy, Dublin. 2007). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated.

Date of upload: 29 November 2018

References

Gosling, P., Manning, C. and Waddell, J. (eds.) 2007 New Survey of Clare Island, Volume 5: Archaeology. Dublin, Royal Irish Academy.

King, P. 2007 The archaeological excavation of two fulachtaí fia (Cat. No. 31 and Cat. No. 34) in Glen. In Gosling, Manning and Waddell (eds.) 2007 New Survey of Clare Island, Volume 5: Archaeology, Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 239-248.