What is recorded here

Quignashee holds a broken fulacht fia where hot stones once cracked inside dark, gritty soil. The N59 road and modern drains cut through the mound, yet a shallow trough and tiny posthole still mark the place where water boiled or food cooked. People may have gathered in the wet hollow beside the drumlins, using the site until later building erased its edges. What remains is a stub of heat and memory, waiting beneath the widened road.

In a hollow adjacent to a water course, in terrain characterised by drumlins with wet, lowlying areas in between the higher ground. This fulacht fia was excavated (Licence: 05E1201) in November 2005 in advance of Mayo county council road-widening works along a stretch of the N59 (Zajac 2009). The fulacht fia had been greatly damaged in the past: it was truncated on its E edge by the N59 road, on its W edge by a modern land drain, and at SW by another land drain. The patchy, surviving remnants of the burnt mound (c. 12m N-S; max Wth 5.2m at NE) consisted of heat-fractured stones in a dark gritty charcoal-rich soil, with the greatest concentration (c. 1.8m N–S; 2.2m E–W; H 0.7m) at the NE. Underlying the burnt stone, to N of centre, was an unlined, subcircular trough pit (1.2m E–W; 1m N–S; D 0.4-0.6m), somewhat truncated at its NE edge, which was cut into subsoil. It was surrounded by an irregular area of subsoil (1.9m NE–SW; 1.75m NW–SE), interpreted as a possible attempt to enlarge the existing trough area. A circular posthole (diam. 0.1m; D 0.2m) was located 0.4m E of the trough. Small pieces of decayed wood were incorporated into the burnt stones surrounding the trough. A piece of oak wood on the natural subsoil adjacent to the trough appears to have been a tree root. A narrow band of the burnt mound was visible in the section face along the existing road edge, and may continue beneath the road. Also visible towards the N end of this section face, was a pit (0.3m N–S; D 0.25m), with a gently sloping S edge and a steeper N edge, cut into the burnt mound layer. (Zajac 2009). There is a rath (MA030-057----) 300m to W. Attached image provided courtesy of S. Zajac. MA030-106----_01.JPG trough with adjacent post hole, viewed from N Compiled by: Jane O'Shaughnessy Date of upload: 25 March 2020

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