What is recorded here

Hot stones crashed into water, filling the air above the River Laune with steam and the sharp smell of wet earth. People gathered there to heat food, clean tools, or prepare bodies for burial, while a long oak trough waited beside the pit with four handles cut into its underside. The wood survived because water and pressure kept it closed, but a digging machine in the late 1990s tore through that quiet preservation. What remains is a circle of loss, marked only by the shape of what was taken and the river still moving past it.

In an area of scrub on the flood-plain of the River Laune, c. 100m S of the river and c. 400m W of Lough Leane. Large quantities of burnt material, consistent with a fulacht fia, were removed by a mechanical digger from an area (diam. c. 6m) during extensive drainage works in the late 1990s. A large wooden artefact (L 4.8m; max. Wth 0.95m) with square ends and four handles on its underside, constructed from the hollowed out trunk of an oak tree, was recovered from the fulacht fia area where it had been used as a trough. The primary function of this artefact has not been determined though its use as a boat has been refuted and the possibility that it was originally a coffin has been suggested. It has been dendrochronologically dated to 1471±9 BC. (Dunne and Doolin 2001, 21-3) The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Kerry. Volume I: South-West Kerry' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2009). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload: 30 May 2011

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