What is recorded here

Hot stones hissed into shallow water at the edge of a lost marsh, shaking the air and filling the dusk with steam. People gathered there in the Late Bronze Age to heat water, cook food, or clean tools, while two fire-hardened posts stood like sentinels at the marsh edge. The mound remembers that repeated labour: stone struck stone, water flashed to vapour, and the land kept the shape of the work.

A mound (L 9.4m; Wth 6m; D 0.84m) of heat-shattered stones and charcoal-enriched soil was identified during archaeological monitoring in advance of the construction of the N22 Ballincollig Bypass and was excavated in 2002. The mound was in an area likely to be the edge of a natural pool or marsh which subsequently dried up. Two wooden posts with fire-hardened tips were exposed at the base of the mound at the edge of the pool/marsh. While their precise function is not known, the excavator suggests that they may have functioned as a revetment or jetty as they were clearly in place before the mound was deposited. A rectangular trough (L 3.12m; Wth 2.07m; D 0.56m), a number of pits (one of which may have functioned as a hearth), a deposit of burnt limestone and a number of linear features were also exposed. A single bronze disc-headed pin was found in the mound material. The fulacht fia was radiocarbon dated to the Late Bronze Age (1000-800 cal. BC). Another smaller fulacht fia (CO073-136----) lay c. 60m to the S. (Russell 2004b, 77, site 1; Russell 2004e, 1-54) The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Volume 5' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2009). Date of upload: 22 December 2009

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