Fulacht fia in Arnestown (bantry By.)

Located on the W bank of a small S-N stream, with the ground rising steeply on the E side of the stream. Monitoring of topsoil removal (E004661) during the construction of the N25 New Ross by-pass in October 2016 identified a spread of burnt stone extending outside the corridor, which was set aside for resolution as Arnestown 4 and was subsequently fully excavated (E004783). The earliest features were two pits, one (dims 1.5m x 0.9m; D 0.19m) beneath the mound was probably a trough and contained burnt mound material, while the other (dims 0.5m x 0.3m; D 0.3m) was just outside the mound to the W and had some burnt stone in its top layer. A gully (Wth 0.4m; D 0.3m; L 2.9m), filled with silt and some burnt stone, extended S beneath the burnt mound material (dims c. 5.75m x c 3m; T 0.1m) which was sealed by a slight silt layer. No artefacts were recovered, but examination of charcoal samples shows that alder and oak were by far the most common species present followed by hazel. A sample of hazel charcoal from the fill of the larger pit produced a C14 date of 1507-1407 cal. BC., and a sample of hazel charcoal from the gully has a C14 date of 1643-1504 cal. BC. (Whitty and Coughlin 2018; excavations.ie 2016:525; 2016:637) Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 22 October 2020