Fulacht fia in Cloghacloka — Report the wrong picture

What is recorded here

Cloghacloka holds a fulacht fia buried beneath modern fields, where charcoal-rich pits and stake holes suggest people heated water beside a temporary windbreak. The site emerged during road works, preserving only the basal remains of a place likely truncated by later drainage. It may have served passes, festivals or ordinary kitchen work, but the absence of bone or pottery denies easy judgement. What is certain is that human hands shaped the earth there, and the land kept the heat long after the names disappeared.

Identified during archaeological monitoring associated with the N20/N21 Limerick Bypass. Excavated under licence no. 99E0364 by Mary B. Deevy during which four phases of activity were identified (Deevy 1999) and described as following; 'The earliest phase consisted of one large and two shallow pits, all filled with charcoal-rich soil and fragmented sandstone. The three pits were probably all troughs. Associated with the troughs were a number of very shallow pits or depressions filled with the same burnt material, some of which may have been hearths. Evidence for wooden structures was recovered in the form of stake-holes in the corners of the two shallow troughs and a short row of stake-holes nearby, which may have been a windbreak. No artefacts or animal bone were recovered from any of these features. The second and third phases of activity were represented by three straight, linear ditches, which were relatively modern field drains. The fill of part of one of these ditches was composed of displaced burnt material, indicating that the earlier, Phase 1, features had been disturbed at some stage by land development. It may be that a shallow mound or spread of burnt material was originally present and that Phase 1 represents the basal remains of a badly truncated fulacht fiadh. Another phase of activity was represented by a series of furrows. These were later than Phase 1, but it was not possible to identify their chronological relationship with Phases 2 and 3’ (www.excavations.ie 1999; Deevy 2000, 163-4). Compiled by: Martin Fitzpatrick Date upload: 29 June 2020

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