Fulachta Fiadh/Burnt Mounds

FULACHT FIADH and BURNT MOUNDS

Burnt Mound v Fulacht Fiadh
Fulacht Fiadh: A horseshoe-shaped or kidney-shaped, mound consisting of fire-cracked stone and charcoal-enriched soil built up around a sunken trough located near or adjacent to a water supply, such as a stream or spring, or in wet marshy areas. The term 'fulacht fia' is ascribed to these sites by Geoffrey Keating. Often associated with cooking, they date primarily, but not exclusively, to the Bronze Age.
Burnt Mound: A burnt mound consists of a circular or irregularly shaped mound of material consisting of burnt stones, ash and charcoal with no surface evidence of a trough or depression. See also fulacht fia.

Keating’s account (from 17th century AD)
'However, from Bealtaine until Samhain, the Fian were obliged to depend solely on the products of their hunting and of the chase … And it was their custom to send their attendants about noon with whatever they had killed in the morning's hunt to an appointed hill …
Keating’s account (from 17th century AD)
… and to kindle raging fires thereon, and put into them a large number of emery stones: and to dig two pits in the yellow clay of the moorland, and put some meat on spits to roast before the fire and to bind another portion of it with súgain in dry bundles, and set it to boil in the larger of the two pits, and keep plying them with the stones that were in the fire … until they were cooked. And these fires were so large that their sites are today in Ireland burnt to blackness, and these are now called Fulacht Fian by the peasantry.

Burnt Mound
Spread of heat shattered stone.
Employ shallow fresh water wells to get water
Cherrywood, Site 3, County Dublin(dated c. 2400-2100 BC)see www.excavations.ie
Killoran, Site 240 (County Tipperary)In Gowen, Ó Néill, Phillips (eds) 2005 Lisheen Mine Archaeological Project. Wordwell
Wells are sometimes lined with wood
These are often referred to as troughs.
Pit and spread of heat-shattered stone.
Killoran Site 26, Co. Tipperary.
Shows typical layout – shattered stone spread around the pit or trough.
What can they tell us?
Where the stones survive from the last use, we can gain some idea of how they were used…

Plot showing the volume of stone required to raise the temperature of 1 litre of water by 1° C, relative to the temperature to which the stone was heated.
Buildings
Some burnt mounds have produced evidence of buildings.
These are simple circular settings of posts
These are simple stone-built buildings.
These are complex, 2-roomed structures.
Drombeg, Co. Cork
Functions other than cooking?
Keatings story ends by saying:
'As to the Fian … each of them stripped off, and tied his shirt around his waist; and they ranged themselves around the second pit … bathing their hair and washing their limbs, and removing their sweat, and then exercising their joints and muscles, thus ridding themselves of their fatigue.
Central America
Charlesland, Co. Wicklow
Panpipes
Dates for Ireland