County: Limerick Site name: ATTYFLIN
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 12:98 Licence number: 96E0379
Author: Cia Mc Conway, Archaeological Development Services Ltd.
Site type: Fulacht fiadh
Period/Dating: Bronze Age (2200 BC-801 BC)
ITM: E 551560m, N 649045m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.590526, -8.714884
The site was investigated at the end of February 1997 as part of the archaeological requirements prior to the realignment of the N20/N21 road in this townland.
The site is a low mound, 25m x 31m, with a heavy coverage of young elm trees and shrubs. There is a low, almost triangular platform to the immediate north-west of the mound, and a discontinuous low grassy bank is visible along the western area of the site. During recent land improvement, stones had been cleared from the field and dumped in and around the mound. It is situated in a slight dip in the north-east corner of a field and remained dry underfoot in an otherwise waterlogged field. The site was identified as a circular enclosure with a possible enclosing stone wall, to which field clearance stones had been added, as recorded in an archaeological EIS by Celie O Rahilly in 1994.
Two trenches were hand-excavated in areas where the heavy tree cover would allow. Trench 1 ran for 4.7m in a north–south direction, up onto the top of the mound and to the immediate east of a partially exposed large boulder.
Two distinct phases of archaeological activity were recorded. The first saw the deposition of burnt mound material, consisting of loose, heat-shattered and burnt stone within a matrix of black, greasy, charcoal-stained, peat-like soil, creating a mound 1.16m high. This activity indicates the presence of a burnt mound, most probably a fulacht fiadh.
At a later stage, a second phase of activity occurred with the cutting of a shallow hollow or pit with a formalised stone kerbing found along the top of the mound, along the southern edge of the trench. To the northern edge of the trench, the burnt mound material was overlain by a spread of larger unburned stones. This may represent an attempt to create a formal stone surface or cairn deposit around the perimeter of the mound material and may have been associated with the activity on the top of the mound.
Trench 2 ran 4m in an east–west direction, cutting across a flattish area of ground with some protruding stone. Natural subsoil immediately underlay a thin covering of topsoil along the western edge of the trench. Elsewhere a compact layer of unburned stone lay within a rooty medium–dark brown soil, infilling a man-made shallow cut. The stone measured 0.44m deep as it ran into the eastern baulk and created a relatively level surface. Without further excavation, it is impossible to establish whether this cut represented the eastern edge of a stone-filled, wide, shallow ditch or whether the stone layer created a type of platform.
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