What is recorded here

Five thousand years ago, people drove stakes into the western earth and built a windbreak around a shallow pit. They heated stones until they cracked, filled the hole with charcoal and burnt sandstone, then abandoned it to the rain. The pit still holds that sudden violence of fire and water, waiting for someone to remember what it cooked.

'Located in the same development site as 99E0360, above, a pit, measuring 1.82m north-east/south-west by 0.92m and 0.82m deep, was truncated to the east by a modern drain. The pit contained two fills. The upper fill included 30% of burnt sandstone fragments. The base contained a high percentage of charcoal. Nine stake-holes cut the western end of the base of the pit. They were aligned north-west/south-east. They were on average 0.08m in diameter and 0.13m deep. Two stake-holes cut the eastern end of the base of the pit. They had a similar diameter but were on average 0.4m deep. Nine stake-holes were clustered to the immediate west of the pit. They were aligned north-west/south-east. It is likely that the stakes to the west and in the western end of the pit functioned as a windbreak, sheltering the pit from the prevailing westerly winds. The site is interpreted as a fulacht fiadh by the excavator, though only a pit containing heat shattered stones and charcoal seems to have been excavated. A radiocarbon date of 3370+/-70BP was calculated from a fill of this pit/trough. No finds were recovered.' Description from ‘The Prehistoric Settlement of the Lee Valley, Tralee, Co. Kerry; A Landscape Perspective’ by Michael Connolly. PhD Thesis UCC 2008 Date of upload: 19 July 2012

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