What is recorded here

Half a kilometre south of Fermoy, a heat-shattered mound hid a timber trough where Bronze Age hands likely boiled water or cooked meat beside a forgotten stream. Machines truncated the site before the N8 bypass advanced, but excavators recovered burnt timbers and stake holes that proved the box was built to hold heat and purpose. The dates point to centuries before written records, when people still read water, fire and wood as a language.

This fulacht fia, which had been truncated by machinery, was located to the S of a watercourse and was excavated in 2004/5 in advance of the construction of the N8 Rathcormac-Fermoy Bypass. It consisted of a mound (9m N-S; 8m E-W; D 0.3m) of heat-shattered stones and charcoal-enriched soil beneath which was a rectangular timber-lined trough (2.22m x 1.36m; D 0.38m). Some of the timbers retrieved from the trough displayed evidence of burning. Three stake-holes were found in the base of the trough, 17 stake-holes and a possible post-hole were located at the E corner of the trough and a further four stake-holes were found at the N corner of the trough. The E portion of a possible pit was also found, 0.6m SW of the trough and a dried-up or back-filled watercourse was recorded to the N of the mound. This fulacht fia was radiocarbon-dated to the late Bronze Age (cal. BC 811-548 (UB-6778); cal. BC 789-419 (UB-6779). (Tierney and Johnston 2006, 1-42; Dunne 2007b, 68) 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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