Fulacht fia in Drombeg (carbery E. (w.d.) By.) — Report the wrong picture

What is recorded here

Hot stones cracked and hissed inside the horseshoe bank while people waited beside the overflow channel. The cooking pit and roasting pit held burnt broken stone, marking repeated meals rather than a single event. Radiocarbon dates span from 109 to 608 AD, suggesting intermittent use across decades or centuries. The fulacht fia still sits forty-five metres from Drombeg stone circle, tying kitchen labour to a place already shaped for gathering and ceremony.

In pasture, on a natural rock terrace on the S slope of a low hill, some 45m to the WSW of Drombeg stone circle (CO143-051002-) and associated with hut site directly to the N (CO143-051001-). Excavation of this fulacht fiadh (Fahy 1960, 3-17) revealed a horseshoe-shaped drystone enclosing bank, a central slab-lined cooking pit, U-shaped hearth, and a well with associated overflow drainage channel. Associated are a C-shaped posthole structure enclosing an oval-shaped unlined pit containing burnt broken stone and a roasting pit, wedge-shaped in plan, and filled with broken burnt stone. Two samples from the fulacht fiadh were dated by radiocarbon analysis. The first, from beneath the mound, returned a date range between 109 and 349 AD, while the second, from the cooking pit returned a range between 368 to 608 AD. This corresponds to a maximum variation of 500 years between the dates, but the excavators believe that 'while it is unlikely that the site was in use for 500 years, it is possible that it was in intermittent use for several decades' (ibid., 15) The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Cork. Volume 1: West Cork' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1992). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. This is a National Monument in State Guardianship (no. 381). See attached photographs: CO143-051003-: Aerial view directly above site, with fulacht fiadh to the SW of the modern rectangular enclosure. CO143-051003-: central slab-lined cooking pit. Date of upload/revision: 14 January 2009 Date of last revision: 27 June 2023

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