County: Limerick Site name: BALLYCAHANE LOWER (BGE)
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: Claire Walsh
Site type: Fulacht fiadh
Period/Dating: Bronze Age (2200 BC-801 BC)
ITM: E 554560m, N 646146m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.564727, -8.670224
After removal of topsoil a small spread of fulacht fiadh mound material was revealed close to a stream forming a field ditch. The site was partially investigated at this stage revealing that the mound material (of which there were no surface indications) lay on and in a deposit of peat, up to 30cm thick. Excavation of two small cuttings through the peat did not yield any evidence for the presence of a trough in the exposed part of the site. However, during this work a number of butchered bones were recovered from the peat which were identified as those of wild boar.
The site was returned to later in order to ascertain the stratigraphical relationship between the peat and the mound material as a find of this sort on a fulacht fiadh site is clearly of some importance.
A cutting from the fence line, through the mound material and peat, showed that the mound material lay in an upper layer of peat only. No mound material was located in the basal layer of peat from which the bones were recovered. The subsoil was a silty marl with many water-weathered stones of limestone, up to 15-20cm in size.
While no stratigraphical link was apparent between the now flattened mound and the bones, there is still a possibility that the two may be broadly contemporary. If the mound was flattened in recent years, the material could have been spread over peat which may have formed since the fulacht fiadh went out of use.
Samples from a peat core and fragments of disturbed timber found on the site have been submitted for radiocarbon dating.
St Catherine's Road, Glenageary, Co. Dublin
