Fulacht fia in Cooksland

Situated on slight rise on a gentle SW-facing slope. Archaeological centre-line testing (04E0415) by J. Dempsey of Testing Area 1, Contract 2, prior to the construction of the M3 motorway (excavations.ie: 2004:1336) identified burnt mound material, which was completely excavated (E003058) by S. Linnane as Cooksland 2 in July2006 (excavations.ie 2006:1538). The principal feature was a spread of broken and burnt stone (diam. 7.5m; max. T 0.1m) over a grey clay into which a flat-bottomed subrectangular trough (dims 2.05m N-S; 1.5m E-W; max. D 0.45m) had been set just N of the burnt spread. A thin layer of black silty clay covered its base beneath traces of wooden planks and there was a stake-hole at each corner. The wooden sides did not survive but a pale grey clay with sandstone inclusions was used as caulking behind the planking. The trough was filled with a black silty clay with frequent inclusions of burnt stone over the collapsed caulking. A sample of alder charcoal produced a C14 date of 1877-1613 cal. BC (BETA 237581). A retouched flake from an end-scraper was recovered from the lower fill of the trough. Three pits (dims 3.6m x 1.4m; D 0.4m: 2.4m x 0.95m; D 0.35m: 2.6m x 1.1m; D 0.65m) were c. 25m to the NE, but no artefacts were recovered from them, and there were two unmapped, double-ditched field banks in the area. (Linnane 2008) See the attached plans from Linnane 2008 (figs 7, 8) _1 Contour plan (interval 0.02m); _2 Trough; Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 26 April 2022